Borquez Margarita, Contreras María P, Vivaldi Ennio, Born Jan, Inostroza Marion
Departamento de Psicología, Universidad de ChileSantiago, Chile.
Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University of TübingenTübingen, Germany.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2017 Apr 26;11:74. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00074. eCollection 2017.
Operant extinction is learning to supress a previously rewarded behavior. It is known to be strongly associated with the specific context in which it was acquired, which limits the therapeutic use of operant extinction in behavioral treatments, e.g., of addiction. We examined whether sleep influences contextual memory of operant extinction over time, using two different recall tests (Recent and Remote). Rats were trained in an operant conditioning task (lever press) in context A, then underwent extinction training in context B, followed by a 3-h retention period that contained either spontaneous morning sleep, morning sleep deprivation, or spontaneous evening wakefulness. A recall test was performed either immediately after the 3-h experimental retention period (Recent recall) or after 48 h (Remote), in the extinction context B and in a novel context C. The two main findings were: (i) at the Recent recall test, sleep in comparison with sleep deprivation and spontaneous wakefulness enhanced extinction memory but, only in the extinction context B; (ii) at the Remote recall, extinction performance after sleep was enhanced in both contexts B and C to an extent comparable to levels at Recent recall in context B. Interestingly, extinction performance at Remote recall was also improved in the sleep deprivation groups in both contexts, with no difference to performance in the sleep group. Our results suggest that 3 h of post-learning sleep transiently facilitate the context specificity of operant extinction at a Recent recall. However, the improvement and contextual generalization of operant extinction memory observed in the long-term, i.e., after 48 h, does not require immediate post-learning sleep.
操作性消退是指学会抑制先前得到奖励的行为。已知它与获得该行为的特定情境密切相关，这限制了操作性消退在行为治疗（如成瘾治疗）中的治疗应用。我们使用两种不同的回忆测试（近期回忆和远期回忆）来研究睡眠是否会随着时间影响操作性消退的情境记忆。大鼠在情境A中接受操作性条件反射任务（杠杆按压）训练，然后在情境B中进行消退训练，随后是一个3小时的保持期，其中包含自发的早晨睡眠、早晨睡眠剥夺或自发的夜间清醒。在3小时的实验保持期结束后立即进行回忆测试（近期回忆），或在48小时后（远期回忆）在消退情境B和新情境C中进行回忆测试。两个主要发现是：（i）在近期回忆测试中，与睡眠剥夺和自发清醒相比，睡眠增强了消退记忆，但仅在消退情境B中；（ii）在远期回忆中，睡眠后的消退表现在情境B和C中均得到增强，增强程度与情境B中近期回忆时的水平相当。有趣的是，在两个情境中，睡眠剥夺组在远期回忆时的消退表现也有所改善，与睡眠组的表现没有差异。我们的结果表明，学习后3小时的睡眠在近期回忆时会短暂促进操作性消退的情境特异性。然而，从长期来看，即在48小时后观察到的操作性消退记忆的改善和情境泛化并不需要学习后立即睡眠。
