Future-relevant memories are not selectively strengthened during sleep

Ashton, Jennifer; Cairney, Scott A.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0258110

Cited by 18 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 52 publications

(93 reference statements)

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“…Previous studies have demonstrated that overnight consolidation effects are strongest for information learned within a few hours of sleep [10,[46][47][48]. Our findings build on this prior…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

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Sleep bolsters schematically incongruent memories

2022

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Our ability to recall memories is improved when sleep follows learning, suggesting that sleep facilitates memory consolidation. A number of factors are thought to influence the impact of sleep on newly learned information, such as whether or not we rehearse that information (e.g. via restudy or retrieval practice), or the extent to which the information is consistent with our pre-existing schematic knowledge. In this pre-registered, online study, we examined the effects of both rehearsal and schematic congruency on overnight consolidation. Participants learned noun-colour pairings (e.g. elephant-red) and rated each pairing as plausible or implausible before completing a baseline memory assessment. Afterwards, participants engaged in a period of restudy or retrieval practice for the pairings, and then entered a 12 h retention interval of overnight sleep or daytime wakefulness. Follow-up assessments were completed immediately after sleep or wake, and again 24 h after learning. Our data indicated that overnight consolidation was amplified for restudied relative to retested noun-colour pairings, but only when sleep occurred soon after learning. Furthermore, whereas plausible (i.e. schematically congruent) pairings were generally better remembered than implausible (i.e. schematically incongruent) pairings, the benefits of sleep were stronger for implausible relative to plausible memories. These findings challenge the notion that schema-conformant memories are preferentially strengthened during post-learning sleep.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…Memory retention is improved by post-learning sleep [5][6][7][8][9][10][11], suggesting that sleep supports the consolidation of newly learned information. Contemporary models of sleep-associated memory processing propose that memories are reactivated during sleep, and thereby integrated into long-term storage [5,[12][13][14][15][16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sleep bolsters schematically incongruent memories

2022

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“…Previous work has shown that sleep (vs wakefulness) supports memory consolidation (Gais et al, 2006;Ashton et al, 2020;Payne et al, 2012;Talamini et al, 2008;Gaskell et al, 2018;Cairney et al, 2018a;Durrant et al, 2016;Ashton & Cairney, 2021) and subsequent learning (Cousins et al, 2018;Kaida et al, 2015;McDermott et al, 2003;Saletin et al, 2016;Tempesta et al, 2016;Yoo et al, 2007). Consistent with these studies, we found that memory retention and next-day learning were better after overnight sleep than wakefulness.…”

Section: Sleep Benefits Overnight Consolidation and Next-day Learningsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Sleep provides a benefit over wake for retaining memories and also for learning new ones (Gais et al, 2006;Ashton et al, 2020;Payne et al, 2012;Talamini et al, 2008;Gaskell et al, 2018;Cairney et al, 2018a;Durrant et al, 2016;Ashton & Cairney, 2021;Yoo et al, 2007;Tempesta et al, 2016;Alberca-Reina et al, 2014;Kaida et al, 2015;Cousins et al, 2018). Some suggest that these benefits can be explained by an active role of sleep, in particular, slow oscillation activity (SOA), in shifting memory dependency from hippocampus to neocortex, and thus increasing hippocampal capacity for new learning (Born & Wilhelm, 2012;Rasch & Born, 2013;Klinzing et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sleep loss disrupts the neural signature of successful learning

Guttesen

Gaskell

Madden

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Sleep supports memory consolidation as well as next-day learning. The Active Systems account of offline consolidation suggests that sleep-associated memory processing paves the way for new learning, but empirical evidence in support of this idea is scarce. Using a within-subjects, crossover design, we assessed behavioural and electrophysiological indices of episodic encoding after a night of sleep or total sleep deprivation in healthy adult humans (aged 18-25 years), and investigated whether the behavioural measures were predicted by the overnight consolidation of episodic associations formed the previous day. Sleep supported memory consolidation and next-day learning, as compared to sleep deprivation. However, the magnitude of this sleep-associated consolidation benefit did not significantly predict the ability to form novel memories after sleep. Interestingly, sleep deprivation prompted a qualitative change in the neural signature of encoding: whereas 12-20 Hz beta desynchronization – an established EEG marker of successful encoding – was observed after sleep, sleep deprivation disrupted beta desynchrony during successful learning. Taken together, our findings suggest that effective learning mechanisms are critically dependent on sleep, but not necessarily sleep-associated consolidation.

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“…Furthermore, two recent online studies using the same sleep manipulation as in the current study (Ashton & Cairney, 2021;Mak et al, in preparation) found clear evidence of a sleep benefit in the classic paired-associate learning paradigm, replicating well-established evidence from lab-based studies (e.g., Lo et al, 2014;Plihal & Born, 1997). Together, these suggest that it is possible to detect sleep-related memory effects in online experiments, as long as pre-registered exclusionary criteria and attention checks are put in place, both of which were implemented in the current (and the next) experiment.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Episodic memory and sleep are involved in the maintenance of context-specific lexical information

Mak¹,

Curtis²,

Rodd³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Familiar words come with a wealth of associated knowledge about their variety of usage, accumulated over a lifetime. How do we track and adjust this knowledge as new instances of a word are encountered? A recent study (Gaskell, Cairney & Rodd, 2019, Cognition) found that, for homonyms (e.g., bank), sleep-associated consolidation facilitates the updating of meaning dominance. Here, we tested the generality of this finding by exposing participants to (Experiment 1; N = 125) non-homonyms (e.g., bathtub) in sentences that biased their meanings towards a specific interpretation (e.g., bathtub-slip vs. bathtub-relax), and (Experiment 2; N = 128) word-class ambiguous words (e.g., loan) in sentences where the words were used in their dispreferred word class (e.g., “He will loan me money”). Both experiments showed that such sentential experience influenced later interpretation and usage of the words more after a night’s sleep than a day awake. We interpret these results in relation to an episodic context account of language comprehension in which new episodic memories are formed every time a sentence is comprehended, and these memories contribute to lexical processing next time the word is encountered and potentially the fine-tuning of long-term lexical knowledge.

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Future-relevant memories are not selectively strengthened during sleep

Cited by 18 publications

References 52 publications

Sleep bolsters schematically incongruent memories

Sleep bolsters schematically incongruent memories

Sleep loss disrupts the neural signature of successful learning

Episodic memory and sleep are involved in the maintenance of context-specific lexical information

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