Slow wave sleep and REM sleep awakenings do not affect sleep dependent memory consolidation

Abstract

study objectives: The effects of REM sleep and slow wave sleep (SWS) deprivation on sleep-dependent motor and declarative memory consolidation. design: Randomized, within-subject, cross-over study setting: Weekly (women: monthly) sleep laboratory visits, with retest 60 hours later Participants: Twelve healthy subjects (6 men) aged between 20 and 30 years interventions: REM sleep deprivation, SWS deprivation, or undisturbed sleep Measurements and results: We deprived subjects once each of REM sleep and SWS, and once let them sleep undisturbed through the night.After each night, we tested declarative and procedural memory consolidation. We tested memory performance by a verbal paired associate task and a sequential finger-tapping task at 21:00 on the study night and again 60 hours later. Although REM sleep and SWS awakenings led to a significant reduction of the respective sleep stages, memory consolidation remained unaffected. We also found a significant correlation between the declarative task and sleep spindles in the undisturbed condition, especially the sleep spindles in the first third of the night. Conclusion: We suggest that word-pair learning relies on stage 2 sleep spindles and requires little SWS. Their sleep dependent consolidation is not affected by SWS deprivation. Simple motor tasks may either be consolidated in stage 2 sleep or depend on only small amounts of REM sleep. Their sleep dependent consolidation is not influenced by REM sleep deprivation.

REM-Schlaf mit Transfer impliziten prozeduralen Wissens nach metakognitivem Lernen assoziiert

“…However, if this were the case, one would also expect similar sleep patterns in the control group. Finally, our data do not fit well with the results showing that SWS and REM sleep deprivation does not affect sleep-dependent memory consolidation [11], emphasizing that declarative and procedural memory consolidation during sleep might be more complex.…”

Sleep Spindles and Hippocampal Functional Connectivity in Human NREM Sleep

“…Temporal coupling between spindles, hippocampal ripples, and slow-oscillations has been described before in that during the up state of cortical slow oscillations, both spindle activity and hippocampal high-frequency ripple activity were increased (Sirota et al, 2003;Battaglia et al, 2004). The coordinated spindle-ripple events have been suggested to provide a mechanism for information transfer between hippocampus and neocortex (Siapas and Wilson, 1998;Sirota et al, 2003;Axmacher et al, 2006), which could explain that sleep spindles, most pronounced in S2 but also occurring in SWS (De Gennaro and Ferrara, 2003), are related to memory consolidation (Gais et al, 2002;Schabus et al, 2004Schabus et al, , 2008Clemens et al, 2005;Fogel and Smith, 2006;Genzel et al, 2009). At the same time, sleep spindles have been shown to reflect thalamus-driven cortical inhibition, which may signify a different or double functionality (Steriade et al, 1993;Cote et al, 2000).…”

“…Several studies stress the relevance of SWS for memory consolidation (Plihal and Born, 1999;Gais and Born, 2004;Mölle et al, 2004;Peigneux et al, 2004;. However, there are reports that S2 may in fact play an equally important role (Gais et al, 2002;Schabus et al, 2004;Clemens et al, 2007;Nishida and Walker, 2007;Genzel et al, 2009). Furthermore, some data on the relevance of sleep EEG macrostructure for memory consolidation are derived from animal models, in which NREM sleep is usually not divided into substages (Ribeiro et al, 2004).…”

Large-scale functional brain networks in human non-rapid eye movement sleep: insights from combined electroencephalographic/functional magnetic resonance imaging studies

“…Although spindles are particularly increased in humans after declarative memory tasks [125][126][127][128] and also associated with increases in performance on visuospatial memory tasks [129,130], several studies have noted an increase in spindles after motor skill learning [131][132][133]. A relationship between sleep spindles and improvements on a motor task has been observed ( [134,135] but also see [136]), and this relationship appeared to be mediated by premotor and parietal regions [134]. These findings may relate to the pre-and postcentral gyri being network hubs in stage 2 (table 1), although only the precuneus (not the parietal lobule) is a parietal hub in SW.…”