Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, USA.
Schizophr Res. 2018 Sep;199:83-89. doi: 10.1016/j.schres.2018.04.019. Epub 2018 Apr 26.
Cognitive deficits in schizophrenia are the strongest predictor of disability and effective treatment is lacking. This reflects our limited mechanistic understanding and consequent lack of treatment targets. In schizophrenia, impaired sleep-dependent memory consolidation correlates with reduced sleep spindle activity, suggesting sleep spindles as a potentially treatable mechanism. In the present study we investigated whether sleep-dependent memory consolidation deficits in schizophrenia are selective.
Schizophrenia patients and healthy individuals performed three tasks that have been shown to undergo sleep-dependent consolidation: the Word Pair Task (verbal declarative memory), the Visual Discrimination Task (visuoperceptual procedural memory), and the Tone Task (statistical learning). Memory consolidation was tested 24 h later, after a night of sleep.
Compared with controls, schizophrenia patients showed reduced overnight consolidation of word pair learning. In contrast, both groups showed similar significant overnight consolidation of visuoperceptual procedural memory. Neither group showed overnight consolidation of statistical learning.
The present findings extend the known deficits in sleep-dependent memory consolidation in schizophrenia to verbal declarative memory, a core, disabling cognitive deficit. In contrast, visuoperceptual procedural memory was spared. These findings support the hypothesis that sleep-dependent memory consolidation deficits in schizophrenia are selective, possibly limited to tasks that rely on spindles. These findings reinforce the importance of deficient sleep-dependent memory consolidation among the cognitive deficits of schizophrenia and suggest sleep physiology as a potentially treatable mechanism.
精神分裂症患者存在认知缺陷，这是导致残疾的最强预测因素，而目前缺乏有效的治疗方法。这反映出我们对其发病机制的了解有限，因此也缺乏治疗靶点。在精神分裂症中，睡眠依赖性记忆巩固受损与睡眠纺锤波活动减少相关，这表明睡眠纺锤波可能是一种潜在的可治疗机制。在本研究中，我们探讨了精神分裂症患者的睡眠依赖性记忆巩固缺陷是否具有选择性。
精神分裂症患者和健康个体完成了三项已证实可进行睡眠依赖性巩固的任务：词对任务（言语陈述性记忆）、视觉辨别任务（视知觉程序性记忆）和音调任务（统计学习）。在睡眠一夜后 24 小时，测试记忆巩固情况。
与对照组相比，精神分裂症患者在夜间的词对学习巩固程度明显降低。相比之下，两组在夜间的视知觉程序性记忆都有显著的巩固。两组均未表现出统计学习的夜间巩固。
本研究结果将已知的精神分裂症患者睡眠依赖性记忆巩固缺陷扩展到言语陈述性记忆，这是一种核心的、致残的认知缺陷。相比之下，视知觉程序性记忆则未受到影响。这些发现支持了精神分裂症患者睡眠依赖性记忆巩固缺陷具有选择性的假说，可能仅限于依赖纺锤波的任务。这些发现强调了睡眠依赖性记忆巩固缺陷在精神分裂症认知缺陷中的重要性，并提示睡眠生理学可能是一种潜在的治疗机制。
