The effect of shift working on workers brain morphometric changes from a voxel-wise comparison

Motivation: Compared to non-shift workers, shift workers are more likely to be at risk for accidents due to decreased performance, attention to work, and concentration. Goal(s): We aim to examine the health effects of shift work from a neuroscientific perspective. Approach: T1w-MPRAGEs were utilized to generate VBM maps to investigate regional volumetric changes between shift and non-shift workers. GLM was created to compare VBM between two groups. Results: The cerebellum region was found to be significantly larger in non-shift work compared to shift work while shift workers had larger volume of the inferior parietal region compared to non-shift workers. Impact: In this study, our aim was to examine the neuroscientific evidence explaining various health issues among shift workers. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate structural differences between shift and non-shift workers.