Abstract:
Insomnia, a common sleep disorder, radically affects an individual cognitive and neuro-
logical health and represents a challenge to personal and professional life. Young adults
in urban academic settings of Bangladesh are very much affected by this alarming issue
of insomnia which is our objective of this study. Current studies open up an interesting
avenue focused on the robust association of insomnia with stress, anxiety, and lifestyle
choices; however, they still lack providing explicit mechanisms that connect these fac-
tors with their consequences and brain regions affected. This dichotomy highlights the
need for holistic investigative research that considers both the psychological and brain-
based mechanisms of insomnia. To bridge this gap, this paper conducts a systematic
exploratory analysis to map the complex relationships between insomnia causes and ef-
fects. By analyzing survey data collected from university students, performing statistical
correlation analyses and clustering techniques, the study unearths significant contributors
to insomnia, assesses their impact and outlines the brain regions influenced. It presents
a novel insomnia scoring scale, drawing from concepts in established tools (e.g. Insomnia
Severity Index (ISI)). Core results show that the symptoms of insomnia are shaped by
psychological, environmental, physical and behavioral factors that can serve to influence
essential brain functions, particularly in areas such as the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus
and thalamus. Insomnia constitutes a significant portion of the burden of disease, yet
understanding trends from differences in treatment approaches has a limited impact in
clinical settings or intervention research and policy making. As such, it fills in an im-
important gap in explanatory research and provides a foundation for targeted intervention
and novel therapeutic approaches to help address the pervasive insomnia burden facing
This age group. The findings will also contribute to precision treatment approaches and
Ultimately, it can also help mitigate insomnia’s broad societal and economic consequences.
