Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
Department of Neurosurgery, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104.
J Neurosci. 2024 Jun 12;44(24):e0022242024. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0022-24.2024.
Memory reactivation during sleep is thought to facilitate memory consolidation. Most sleep reactivation research has examined how reactivation of specific facts, objects, and associations benefits their overall retention. However, our memories are not unitary, and not all features of a memory persist in tandem over time. Instead, our memories are transformed, with some features strengthened and others weakened. Does sleep reactivation drive memory transformation? We leveraged the Targeted Memory Reactivation technique in an object category learning paradigm to examine this question. Participants (20 female, 14 male) learned three categories of novel objects, where each object had unique, distinguishing features as well as features shared with other members of its category. We used a real-time EEG protocol to cue the reactivation of these objects during sleep at moments optimized to generate reactivation events. We found that reactivation improved memory for distinguishing features while worsening memory for shared features, suggesting a differentiation process. The results indicate that sleep reactivation does not act holistically on object memories, instead supporting a transformation where some features are enhanced over others.
睡眠期间的记忆再激活被认为有助于记忆巩固。大多数关于睡眠再激活的研究都考察了特定事实、物体和联想的再激活如何使它们的整体记忆得到提升。然而,我们的记忆并不是单一的,记忆的不是所有特征都能随着时间的推移而同步保持。相反,我们的记忆会发生变化,一些特征会增强,而另一些特征会减弱。睡眠再激活是否会推动记忆的转变?我们在一个物体类别学习范式中利用目标记忆再激活技术来检验这个问题。参与者(20 名女性,14 名男性)学习了三类新的物体,每个物体都有独特的、可区分的特征,也有与其类别中的其他成员共有的特征。我们使用实时 EEG 协议在优化的时间点提示这些物体在睡眠中的再激活,以产生再激活事件。我们发现,再激活提高了对区分特征的记忆,而对共享特征的记忆则恶化了,这表明了一个分化过程。结果表明,睡眠再激活并非对物体记忆整体起作用,而是支持一种特征增强的转变。