Department of Psychology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom.
Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9DU, United Kingdom.
Cereb Cortex. 2024 May 2;34(5). doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhae183.
Sleep supports memory consolidation via the reactivation of newly formed memory traces. One way to investigate memory reactivation in sleep is by exposing the sleeping brain to auditory retrieval cues; a paradigm known as targeted memory reactivation. To what extent the acoustic properties of memory cues influence the effectiveness of targeted memory reactivation, however, has received limited attention. We addressed this question by exploring how verbal and non-verbal memory cues affect oscillatory activity linked to memory reactivation in sleep. Fifty-one healthy male adults learned to associate visual stimuli with spoken words (verbal cues) and environmental sounds (non-verbal cues). Subsets of the verbal and non-verbal memory cues were then replayed during sleep. The voice of the verbal cues was either matched or mismatched to learning. Memory cues (relative to unheard control cues) prompted an increase in theta/alpha and spindle power, which have been heavily implicated in sleep-associated memory processing. Moreover, verbal memory cues were associated with a stronger increase in spindle power than non-verbal memory cues. There were no significant differences between the matched and mismatched verbal cues. Our findings suggest that verbal memory cues may be most effective for triggering memory reactivation in sleep, as indicated by an amplified spindle response.
睡眠通过重新激活新形成的记忆痕迹来支持记忆巩固。一种研究睡眠中记忆再激活的方法是让睡眠中的大脑暴露在听觉检索线索下; 这一范式被称为有针对性的记忆再激活。然而，记忆线索的声学特性对有针对性的记忆再激活的有效性的影响程度受到的关注有限。我们通过探索言语和非言语记忆线索如何影响与睡眠中记忆再激活相关的振荡活动来解决这个问题。51 名健康男性成年人学习将视觉刺激与口语词（言语线索）和环境声音（非言语线索）联系起来。然后在睡眠期间回放言语和非言语记忆线索的子集。言语线索的声音与学习时匹配或不匹配。与未听到的对照线索相比，记忆线索（相对于未听到的对照线索）提示θ/α 和纺锤波功率增加，这与睡眠相关的记忆处理密切相关。此外，言语记忆线索与比非言语记忆线索更强的纺锤波功率增加相关。匹配和不匹配的言语线索之间没有显著差异。我们的发现表明，言语记忆线索可能是触发睡眠中记忆再激活最有效的线索，这可以从增强的纺锤波反应中得到证明。
