Seibold Mitja, Rasch Björn, Born Jan, Diekelmann Susanne
a Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University of Tübingen , Tübingen , Germany.
b Department of Psychology , University of Fribourg , Fribourg , Switzerland.
Memory. 2018 Mar;26(3):377-384. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2017.1329442. Epub 2017 May 24.
Memory consolidation during sleep is assumed to rely on the repeated reactivation of newly encoded memories particularly during slow wave sleep (SWS). It has been proposed that reactivated memories during sleep - like during wakefulness - undergo a labilisation process, enabling the strengthening and integration of new memories into pre-existing networks. Here, we tested this idea by introducing interference directly during sleep in the reactivation/consolidation phase. We predicted that cueing interfering memories during sleep would impair the consolidation of recently learned memories. Participants learned a visuo-spatial memory task before they were allowed to sleep for 40 min. During sleep, and particularly during SWS, subjects were presented with interference via odour cueing (compared to a no interference vehicle condition). In contrast to our hypothesis, cueing of the interference during sleep did not impair consolidation of the newly learned memories: odour and vehicle conditions did not differ in memory recall after sleep. On the contrary, subjects even displayed significantly fewer intrusions from the interference during memory recall when the odour was presented during sleep. These findings suggest that interference presentation during sleep does not disrupt endogenous memory consolidation, but might even facilitate pattern separation and memory stabilisation through generalisation processes.
睡眠期间的记忆巩固被认为依赖于新编码记忆的反复重新激活，尤其是在慢波睡眠（SWS）期间。有人提出，睡眠期间重新激活的记忆——就像在清醒时一样——会经历一个不稳定过程，从而使新记忆得以强化并整合到已有的网络中。在此，我们通过在睡眠期间的重新激活/巩固阶段直接引入干扰来验证这一观点。我们预测，在睡眠期间提示干扰性记忆会损害近期所学记忆的巩固。参与者在被允许睡眠40分钟之前学习了一项视觉空间记忆任务。在睡眠期间，尤其是在慢波睡眠期间，通过气味提示向受试者呈现干扰（与无干扰对照条件相比）。与我们的假设相反，睡眠期间提示干扰并未损害新学记忆的巩固：睡眠后的记忆回忆中，气味和对照条件并无差异。相反，当睡眠期间呈现气味时，受试者在记忆回忆中受到干扰的侵入甚至显著减少。这些发现表明，睡眠期间呈现干扰不会破坏内源性记忆巩固，反而可能通过泛化过程促进模式分离和记忆稳定。
