Schmidig Flavio Jean, Geva-Sagiv Maya, Falach Rotem, Yakim Sharon, Gat Yael, Sharon Omer, Fried Itzhak, Nir Yuval
Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Department of Physiology & Pharmacology, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
J Sleep Res. 2024 Oct;33(5):e14151. doi: 10.1111/jsr.14151. Epub 2024 Jan 29.
Sleep improves the consolidation and long-term stability of newly formed memories and associations. Most research on human declarative memory and its consolidation during sleep uses word-pair associations requiring exhaustive learning. In the present study, we present the visual paired association learning (vPAL) paradigm, in which participants learn new associations between images of celebrities and animals. The vPAL is based on a one-shot exposure that resembles learning in natural conditions. We tested if vPAL can reveal a role for sleep in memory consolidation by assessing the specificity of memory recognition, and the cued recall performance, before and after sleep. We found that a daytime nap improved the stability of recognition memory and discrimination abilities compared to identical intervals of wakefulness. By contrast, cued recall of associations did not exhibit significant sleep-dependent effects. High-density electroencephalography during naps further revealed an association between sleep spindle density and stability of recognition memory. Thus, the vPAL paradigm opens new avenues for future research on sleep and memory consolidation across ages and heterogeneous populations in health and disease.
睡眠可改善新形成记忆和联想的巩固以及长期稳定性。大多数关于人类陈述性记忆及其在睡眠期间巩固的研究使用需要详尽学习的词对联想。在本研究中，我们介绍了视觉配对联想学习（vPAL）范式，参与者在此范式中学习名人与动物图像之间的新联想。vPAL基于单次曝光，类似于自然条件下的学习。我们通过评估睡眠前后记忆识别的特异性和线索回忆表现，测试了vPAL是否能揭示睡眠在记忆巩固中的作用。我们发现，与相同时长的清醒状态相比，白天小睡可提高识别记忆的稳定性和辨别能力。相比之下，联想的线索回忆未表现出显著的睡眠依赖性效应。小睡期间的高密度脑电图进一步揭示了睡眠纺锤波密度与识别记忆稳定性之间的关联。因此，vPAL范式为未来针对健康和疾病状态下各年龄段及异质人群的睡眠与记忆巩固研究开辟了新途径。
