Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.
Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary.
Sci Rep. 2017 Feb 6;7:41873. doi: 10.1038/srep41873.
The active role of sleep in memory consolidation is still debated, and due to a large between-species variation, the investigation of a wide range of different animal species (besides humans and laboratory rodents) is necessary. The present study applied a fully non-invasive methodology to study sleep and memory in domestic dogs, a species proven to be a good model of human awake behaviours. Polysomnography recordings performed following a command learning task provide evidence that learning has an effect on dogs' sleep EEG spectrum. Furthermore, spectral features of the EEG were related to post-sleep performance improvement. Testing an additional group of dogs in the command learning task revealed that sleep or awake activity during the retention interval has both short- and long-term effects. This is the first evidence to show that dogs' human-analogue social learning skills might be related to sleep-dependent memory consolidation.
睡眠在记忆巩固中的积极作用仍存在争议，而且由于物种间存在很大的差异，因此有必要对广泛的不同动物物种（除人类和实验啮齿动物之外）进行研究。本研究采用了一种完全非侵入性的方法来研究家犬的睡眠和记忆，家犬已被证明是人类清醒行为的良好模型。在完成命令学习任务后进行的多导睡眠图记录提供了证据，证明学习对狗的睡眠 EEG 频谱有影响。此外，脑电图的频谱特征与睡眠后表现的改善有关。在命令学习任务中测试另一组狗发现，在保持间隔期间的睡眠或清醒活动具有短期和长期影响。这是第一个证明狗的人类类似社交学习技能可能与睡眠依赖性记忆巩固有关的证据。
