Unlearning implicit social biases during sleep

Abstract

Although people may endorse egalitarianism and tolerance, social biases can remain operative and drive harmful actions in an unconscious manner. Here we investigated training to reduce implicit racial and gender bias. Forty participants processed counter-stereotype information paired with one sound for each type of bias. Biases were reduced immediately after training. During subsequent slow-wave sleep, one sound was unobtrusively presented to each participant, repeatedly, to reactivate one type of training. Corresponding bias reductions were fortified in comparison to the social bias not externally reactivated during sleep. This advantage remained one week later, the magnitude of which was associated with time in slow-wave and rapid-eye-movement sleep after training. We conclude that memory reactivation during sleep enhances counter-stereotype training, and that maintaining a bias reduction is sleep-dependent.

Targeted memory reactivation of newly learned words during sleep triggers REM-mediated integration of new memories and existing knowledge

“…However, this association was abolished with cueing during SWS, thus cueing may have stabilised the memories and eliminated the processes involved in forgetting during REM sleep. Finally, Hu et al (2015) had participants undergo two types of counter-bias training one of which was cued during SWS. A larger reduction was seen in the bias that was cued and this cueing-related change was predicted by the product of time spent in SWS and REM.…”

The Consolidation and Transformation of Memory

“…In the hippocampus, neuronal replay occurs during sharp wave-ripples, the ripples representing local field potential oscillations 180 Hz (in rats) (Diba and Buzsá ki, 2007). The experimental induction of neural reactivation by cuing the newly encoded memory during SWS with associated olfactory and auditory stimuli was reported to enhance the cued memory Oudiette and Paller, 2013;Hu et al, 2015). This indicates an instrumental role of reactivation during sleep in memory consolidation.…”

System Consolidation During Sleep – A Common Principle Underlying Psychological and Immunological Memory Formation

“…From this it follows that a pre-existing schema-like representation is expected to essentially determine what is abstracted as gist from an experienced event during consolidation. Finally, whereas the term schema is most often used in the context of cognitive memory processing, we consider gist abstraction to include also emotional and motivational abstraction processes in the way they underlie, for example, the formation of long-lasting attitudes and plans [60,61].…”