Does sleep protect memories against interference? A failure to replicate

Tucker, Meagan C.; Bailes, Carrie; Caldwell, Mary; Wamsley, Erin J.

doi:10.1016/j.sleep.2019.11.1094

Cited by 1 publication

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“…Indeed, despite training participants to 100% pre-delay memory accuracy, the introduction of retroactive interference after the delay and before the final retrieval revealed a beneficial effect of sleep over wake, i.e. a sleep-dependent consolidation effect (Ellenbogen, Hulbert, Jiang, & Stickgold, 2009;Ellenbogen et al, 2006; but see Bailes, Caldwell, Wamsley, & Tucker, 2020;Pöhlchen, Pawlizki, Gais, & Schönauer, 2020). That said, these studies did not compare the impact of retroactive interference on sleep-dependent consolidation effects for memories initially strong vs. weak, leaving open whether sleep protects all memories against retroactive interference.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Does sleep-dependent consolidation favour weak memories?

Petzka¹,

Charest²,

Balanos³

et al. 2020

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Sleep stabilizes newly acquired memories, a process referred to as memory consolidation. According to recent studies, sleep-dependent consolidation processes might be deployed to different extents for different types of memories. In particular, weaker memories might benefit greater from post-learning sleep than stronger memories. However, under standard testing conditions, sleep-dependent consolidation effects for stronger memories might be obscured by ceiling effects. To test this possibility, we devised a new memory paradigm (Memory Arena) in which participants learned temporospatial arrangements of objects. Prior to a delay period spent either awake or asleep, training thresholds were controlled to yield relatively weak or relatively strong memories. After the delay period, retrieval difficulty was controlled via the presence or absence of a retroactive interference task. Under standard testing conditions (no interference), a sleep-dependent consolidation effect was indeed observed for weaker memories only. Critically though, with increased retrieval demands, sleep-dependent consolidation effects were seen for both weaker and stronger memories. These results suggest that all memories are consolidated during sleep, but that memories of different strengths warrant different testing conditions to unveil their benefit from post-learning sleep.

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