About the NICHY consortium

The NeuroImaging Consortium in Central Disorders of Hypersomnolence (NICHY) is an established international research consortium dedicated to understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying central disorders of hypersomnolence (CDH) through large-scale, collaborative neuroimaging studies. NICHY integrates structural and functional MRI data across multiple sites worldwide to identify robust imaging markers associated with CDH, including narcolepsy type 1 (NT1), narcolepsy type 2 (NT2), and idiopathic hypersomnia (IH), as well as healthy controls.

Aims

The overarching aim of NICHY is to improve understanding of how CDH affects brain structure and function and to facilitate the development of data-driven approaches for differential diagnosis, clinical stratification, and eventually targeted treatment. By pooling multi-site MRI data and using harmonized processing pipelines, NICHY enables well-powered analyses that account for site-specific and cross-cultural variability.

Key research questions addressed by NICHY include:

• How do brain structure and function differ between individuals with CDH and healthy, well-rested controls?
• How do structural and functional brain profiles vary across NT1, NT2, and IH?
• Can MRI-derived measures serve as future diagnostic tools to differentiate between CDH subtypes or newly proposed phenotypes?