Rocking movements appear to affect human sleep. Recent research suggested a facilitated transition from wake to sleep and a boosting of slow oscillations and sleep spindles due to lateral rocking movements during an afternoon nap. This study aimed at investigating the effect of vestibular stimulation on sleep onset, nocturnal sleep and its potential to increase sleep spindles and slow waves, which could influence memory performance. Polysomnography was recorded in 18 males (age: 20–28 years) during three nights: movement until sleep onset (C1), movement for 2 hours (C2), and one baseline (B) without motion. Sleep dependent changes in memory performance were assessed with a word-pair learning task. Although subjects preferred nights with vestibular stimulation, a facilitated sleep onset or a boost in slow oscillations was not observed. N2 sleep and the total number of sleep spindles increased during the 2 h with vestibular stimulation (C2) but not over the entire night. Memory performance increased over night but did not differ between conditions. The lack of an effect might be due to the already high sleep efficiency (96%) and sleep quality of our subjects during baseline. Nocturnal sleep in good sleepers might not benefit from the potential facilitating effects of vestibular stimulation.

Associative memory can be rendered malleable by a reminder. Blocking the ensuing reconsolidation process is suggested as a therapeutic target for unwanted aversive memories. Matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) is required for structural synapse remodeling involved in memory consolidation. Inhibiting MMP-9 with doxycycline is suggested to attenuate human threat conditioning. Here, we investigated whether MMP-9 inhibition also interferes with threat memory reconsolidation. Male and female human participants (N = 78) learned the association between two visual conditioned stimuli (CS+) and a 50% chance of an unconditioned nociceptive stimulus (US), and between CS− and the absence of US. On day 7, one CS+ was reminded without reinforcement 3.5 h after ingesting either 200 mg of doxycycline or placebo. On day 14, retention of CS memory was assessed under extinction by fear-potentiated startle. Contrary to our expectations, we observed a greater CS+/CS− difference in participants who were reminded under doxycycline compared with placebo. Participants who were reminded under placebo showed extinction learning during the retention test, which was not observed in the doxycycline group. There was no difference between the reminded and the nonreminded CS+ in either group. In contrast, during relearning after the retention test, the CS+/CS− difference was more pronounced in the placebo group than in the doxycycline group. To summarize, a single dose of doxycycline before threat memory reminder appeared to have no specific impact on reconsolidation, but to globally impair extinction learning, and threat relearning, beyond drug clearance.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Matrix metalloproteinase-9 inhibition appears to attenuate memory consolidation. It could also be a target for blocking reconsolidation. Here, we test this hypothesis in human threat conditioning. We find that doxycycline has no specific impact on a reminded cue, but confers a global reduction in extinction learning and threat learning beyond the clearance of the drug. This may point toward a more long-lasting impact of doxycycline treatment on memory plasticity.