Department of NEUROFARBA, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Department of Psychology, University of Campania L. Vanvitelli, Caserta, Italy.
J Sleep Res. 2022 Jun;31(3):e13527. doi: 10.1111/jsr.13527. Epub 2021 Dec 1.
Previous studies suggest that sleep can influence false memories formation. Specifically, acute sleep loss has been shown to promote false memories production by impairing memory retrieval at subsequent testing. Surprisingly, the relationship between sleep and false memories has only been investigated in healthy subjects but not in individuals with insomnia, whose sleep is objectively impaired compared to healthy subjects. Indeed, this population shows several cognitive impairments involving prefrontal functioning that could affect source monitoring processes and contribute to false memories generation. Moreover, it has been previously reported that subjects with insomnia differentially process sleep-related versus neutral stimuli. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to compare false memories production between individuals with insomnia symptoms and good sleepers, and to evaluate the possible influence of stimulus category (neutral versus sleep-related) in the two groups. The results show that false memories are globally increased in participants reporting insomnia symptoms compared to good sleepers. A reduction in source monitoring ability was also observed in the former group, suggesting that an impairment of this executive function could be especially involved in false memories formation. Moreover, our data seem to confirm that false memories production in individuals with insomnia symptoms appears significantly modulated by stimulus category.
先前的研究表明，睡眠会影响错误记忆的形成。具体来说，急性睡眠剥夺已被证明通过在随后的测试中损害记忆检索来促进错误记忆的产生。令人惊讶的是，睡眠与错误记忆之间的关系仅在健康受试者中进行了研究，但在失眠症患者中并未进行研究，与健康受试者相比，失眠症患者的睡眠质量确实受到了损害。事实上，该人群表现出涉及前额叶功能的多种认知障碍，这可能会影响来源监测过程并导致错误记忆的产生。此外，先前的研究报告称，失眠症患者对与睡眠相关的刺激与中性刺激的处理方式不同。因此，本研究的目的是比较有失眠症状的个体和睡眠良好的个体之间错误记忆的产生，并评估刺激类别（中性与与睡眠相关）对两组的可能影响。结果表明，与睡眠良好的个体相比，报告有失眠症状的个体的错误记忆总体上增加了。在前一组中还观察到源监测能力的下降，这表明这种执行功能的障碍可能特别涉及错误记忆的形成。此外，我们的数据似乎证实，失眠症患者的错误记忆产生受到刺激类别的显著调节。
