Landmann Nina, Kuhn Marion, Maier Jonathan-Gabriel, Feige Bernd, Spiegelhalder Kai, Riemann Dieter, Nissen Christoph
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany.
Sleep. 2016 Mar 1;39(3):705-13. doi: 10.5665/sleep.5556.
Sleep after learning promotes the quantitative strengthening of new memories. Less is known about the impact of sleep on the qualitative reorganization of memory content. This study tested the hypothesis that sleep facilitates both memory strengthening and reorganization as indexed by a verbal creativity task.
Sixty healthy university students (30 female, 30 male, 20-30 years) were investigated in a randomized, controlled parallel-group study with three experimental groups (sleep, sleep deprivation, daytime wakefulness). At baseline, 60 items of the Compound Remote Associate (CRA) task were presented. At retest after the experimental conditions, the same items were presented again together with 20 new control items to disentangle off-line incubation from online performance effects.
Sleep significantly strengthened formerly encoded memories in comparison to both wake conditions (improvement in speed of correctly resolved items). Offline reorganization was not enhanced following sleep, but was enhanced following sleep-deprivation in comparison to sleep and daytime wakefulness (solution time of previously incubated, newly solved items). Online performance did not differ between the groups (solution time of new control items).
The results support the notion that sleep promotes the strengthening, but not the reorganization, of newly encoded memory traces in a verbal creativity task. Future studies are needed to further determine the impact of sleep on different types of memory reorganization, such as associative thinking, creativity and emotional memory processing, and potential clinical translations, such as the augmentation of psychotherapy through sleep interventions.
学习后的睡眠可促进新记忆的量化强化。关于睡眠对记忆内容质性重组的影响，我们了解得较少。本研究检验了这样一个假设，即睡眠通过一项言语创造力任务所衡量，有助于记忆强化和重组。
在一项随机、对照平行组研究中，对60名健康大学生（30名女性，30名男性，年龄20 - 30岁）进行了调查，设有三个实验组（睡眠组、睡眠剥夺组、白天清醒组）。在基线时，呈现了60项复合远距离联想（CRA）任务。在实验条件结束后的复测中，再次呈现相同的项目，并加入20个新的对照项目，以区分离线酝酿效应和在线表现效应。
与两种清醒状态相比，睡眠显著强化了先前编码的记忆（正确解决项目的速度有所提高）。睡眠后离线重组并未增强，但与睡眠组和白天清醒组相比，睡眠剥夺后离线重组增强了（先前酝酿、新解决项目的解决时间）。各组的在线表现没有差异（新对照项目的解决时间）。
结果支持这样一种观点，即在言语创造力任务中，睡眠促进新编码记忆痕迹的强化，但不促进其重组。未来需要进一步研究睡眠对不同类型记忆重组的影响，如联想思维、创造力和情绪记忆加工，以及潜在的临床转化，如通过睡眠干预增强心理治疗效果。
