Ramirez Butavand Daniela, Nagel Juliane, Feld Gordon B, Steib Simon
Human Movement, Training and Active Aging Department, Institute of Sports and Sports Science, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
Clinical Psychology, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 1;15(1):20388. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-07880-z.
The importance of sleep for memory consolidation has been extensively studied, but its role for memory encoding remains less well characterized. At the molecular and cellular level, the renormalization of synaptic weights during sleep has received substantial support, which is thought to free capacity to encode new information at the behavioral level. However, at the systems level and behaviorally, support for this process playing a major role for memory function remains scarce. In the current study, we investigated the utility of moderate- and high-intensity evening exercise as a low-cost low-tech intervention to modulate sleep and its influence on subsequent encoding in the morning. Our findings indicate that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) improved post-sleep memory performance with effects lasting up to 24 h after initial encoding. In addition, we show that especially the early parts of the encoding task were affected by the HIIT intervention. Intriguingly, participants with lower encoding abilities seemed to benefit more from the HIIT intervention suggesting it not only as a tool for basic research but also as a candidate for applications to boost memory performance in mental disorders or in the elderly. These results provide first evidence that acute exercise can affect learning processes even hours after it occurs.
睡眠对记忆巩固的重要性已得到广泛研究，但其在记忆编码中的作用仍不太清楚。在分子和细胞水平上，睡眠期间突触权重的重新归一化得到了大量支持，这被认为在行为水平上释放了编码新信息的能力。然而，在系统水平和行为层面，支持这一过程对记忆功能起主要作用的证据仍然很少。在当前的研究中，我们调查了中高强度晚间锻炼作为一种低成本、低技术干预手段来调节睡眠及其对随后早晨编码的影响的效用。我们的研究结果表明，高强度间歇训练（HIIT）改善了睡眠后的记忆表现，其效果在初始编码后长达24小时内持续存在。此外，我们表明，尤其是编码任务的早期部分受到了HIIT干预的影响。有趣的是，编码能力较低的参与者似乎从HIIT干预中获益更多，这表明它不仅是基础研究的工具，也是提高精神障碍患者或老年人记忆表现的应用候选方法。这些结果提供了首个证据，表明急性运动即使在运动数小时后仍能影响学习过程。
