Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Tübingen, Germany.
Graduate Training Centre of Neuroscience, International Max Planck Research School, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Sleep. 2021 Jun 11;44(6). doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsaa290.
Sleep is assumed to support memory through an active systems consolidation process that does not only strengthen newly encoded representations but also facilitates the formation of more abstract gist memories. Studies in humans and rodents indicate a key role of the precise temporal coupling of sleep slow oscillations (SO) and spindles in this process. The present study aimed at bolstering these findings in typically developing (TD) children, and at dissecting particularities in SO-spindle coupling underlying signs of enhanced gist memory formation during sleep found in a foregoing study in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without intellectual impairment. Sleep data from 19 boys with ASD and 20 TD boys (9-12 years) were analyzed. Children performed a picture-recognition task and the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task before nocturnal sleep (encoding) and in the next morning (retrieval). Sleep-dependent benefits for visual-recognition memory were comparable between groups but were greater for gist abstraction (recall of DRM critical lure words) in ASD than TD children. Both groups showed a closely comparable SO-spindle coupling, with fast spindle activity nesting in SO-upstates, suggesting that a key mechanism of memory processing during sleep is fully functioning already at childhood. Picture-recognition at retrieval after sleep was positively correlated to frontocortical SO-fast-spindle coupling in TD children, and less in ASD children. Critical lure recall did not correlate with SO-spindle coupling in TD children but showed a negative correlation (r = -.64, p = .003) with parietal SO-fast-spindle coupling in ASD children, suggesting other mechanisms specifically conveying gist abstraction, that may even compete with SO-spindle coupling.
睡眠被认为通过一个主动的系统巩固过程来支持记忆，这个过程不仅可以增强新编码的表示，还可以促进更抽象的概要记忆的形成。人类和啮齿动物的研究表明，睡眠慢波（SO）和纺锤波的精确时间耦合在这个过程中起着关键作用。本研究旨在支持在典型发育（TD）儿童中发现的这些发现，并剖析在前一项自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童研究中发现的睡眠中概要记忆形成增强的 SO-纺锤波耦合的特殊性，这些儿童没有智力障碍。分析了 19 名 ASD 男孩和 20 名 TD 男孩（9-12 岁）的睡眠数据。儿童在夜间睡眠（编码）前和第二天早上（检索）进行图片识别任务和 Deese-Roediger-McDermott（DRM）任务。视觉识别记忆的睡眠依赖性获益在两组之间相当，但在 ASD 儿童中，概要抽象（DRM 关键诱饵词的回忆）的获益更大。两组的 SO-纺锤波耦合非常相似，快速纺锤波活动嵌套在 SO 波中，这表明记忆处理的关键机制在儿童时期已经完全发挥作用。睡眠后检索时的图片识别与 TD 儿童的额叶 SO-快纺锤波耦合呈正相关，而 ASD 儿童的相关性较小。TD 儿童的关键诱饵词回忆与 SO-纺锤波耦合无关，但 ASD 儿童的顶叶 SO-快纺锤波耦合呈负相关（r = -.64，p =.003），表明存在其他专门传递概要抽象的机制，甚至可能与 SO-纺锤波耦合竞争。
