Dream & Nightmare Laboratory, Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine, CIUSSS-NÎM - Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Québec, Canada; Department of Neuroscience, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Dream & Nightmare Laboratory, Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine, CIUSSS-NÎM - Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Québec, Canada; Department of Biomedical Sciences, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2021 Sep;183:107460. doi: 10.1016/j.nlm.2021.107460. Epub 2021 May 18.
Sleep facilitates memory consolidation through offline reactivations of memory traces. Dreaming may play a role in memory improvement and may reflect these memory reactivations. To experimentally address this question, we used targeted memory reactivation (TMR), i.e., application, during sleep, of a stimulus that was previously associated with learning, to assess whether it influences task-related dream imagery (or task-dream reactivations). Specifically, we asked if TMR or task-dream reactivations in either slow-wave (SWS) or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep benefit whole-body procedural learning. Healthy participants completed a virtual reality (VR) flying task prior to and following a morning nap or rest period during which task-associated tones were readministered in either SWS, REM sleep, wake or not at all. Findings indicate that learning benefits most from TMR when applied in REM sleep compared to a Control-sleep group. REM dreams that reactivated kinesthetic elements of the VR task (e.g., flying, accelerating) were also associated with higher improvement on the task than were dreams that reactivated visual elements (e.g., landscapes) or that had no reactivations. TMR did not itself influence dream content but its effects on performance were greater when coexisting with task-dream reactivations in REM sleep. Findings may help explain the mechanistic relationships between dream and memory reactivations and may contribute to the development of sleep-based methods to optimize complex skill learning.
睡眠通过对记忆痕迹的离线激活促进记忆巩固。做梦可能在记忆改善中发挥作用，并反映这些记忆的再激活。为了实验性地解决这个问题，我们使用了靶向记忆再激活（TMR），即在睡眠期间应用与学习相关的刺激，以评估其是否会影响与任务相关的梦境意象（或任务-梦境再激活）。具体来说，我们想知道 TMR 或任务-梦境再激活在慢波睡眠（SWS）或快速眼动睡眠（REM）中是否会有益于全身程序性学习。健康参与者在上午小睡或休息前完成了一项虚拟现实（VR）飞行任务，在此期间，与任务相关的声音在 SWS、REM 睡眠、清醒或根本不被重新给予。研究结果表明，与对照睡眠组相比，TMR 在 REM 睡眠中应用时最有利于学习。与视觉元素（如风景）或无再激活的梦境相比，重新激活 VR 任务动觉元素（如飞行、加速）的 REM 梦也与任务的更高改善相关。TMR 本身不会影响梦境内容，但当它与 REM 睡眠中的任务-梦境再激活共存时，它对表现的影响更大。研究结果可能有助于解释梦境和记忆再激活之间的机制关系，并有助于开发基于睡眠的方法来优化复杂技能学习。
