Sleep-dependent consolidation of statistical learning

Durrant, Simon J.; Taylor, Charlotte; Cairney, Scott A.; Lewis, Penelope A.

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.015

Cited by 171 publications

(182 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Importantly, performance on these tasks typically improves across both wakefulness and sleep but improvement is greater across the latter. This pattern is particularly apparent in our own study of statistical learning [38] that shows that time and sleep independently facilitate abstraction of the statistical properties underpinning a set of learned stimuli. Importantly, this facilitation was significantly greater across sleep and was predicted by slow wave activity.…”

Section: Why Sleep?mentioning

confidence: 80%

Overlapping memory replay during sleep builds cognitive schemata

Lewis

Durrant

2011

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

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458

437

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Sleep enhances integration across multiple stimuli, abstraction of general rules, insight into hidden solutions and false memory formation. Newly learned information is better assimilated if compatible with an existing cognitive framework or schema. This article proposes a mechanism by which the reactivation of newly learned memories during sleep could actively underpin both schema formation and the addition of new knowledge to existing schemata. Under this model, the overlapping replay of related memories selectively strengthens shared elements. Repeated reactivation of memories in different combinations progressively builds schematic representations of the relationships between stimuli. We argue that this selective strengthening forms the basis of cognitive abstraction, and explain how it facilitates insight and false memory formation.What's the gist? I do not remember many details about childhood birthday parties. There was one when we played blind man's bluff, and another with cucumber sandwiches, but in general these affairs blur together under the broad heading of birthdays. About this category I have much information: I know the parties involved hordes of children, that there were presents and invariably a cake. However, which birthday belonged to whom, and exactly what was done there escapes me. This is unsurprising as chronologically old memories rarely include clear episodic details but these aspects of a situation or memory type that are repeated again and again are normally recalled with ease. Central shared concepts of this type can be thought of as the 'gist' (see Glossary), or essential features, of a set of memories, and taken together can form a cognitive framework of expectations or schema (Box 1). This article proposes a physiological mechanism by which memory replay during sleep could be responsible for the abstraction of gist information from newly encoded memories to form cognitive schemata.Recent research has shown that sleep facilitates abstraction of gist information [1][2][3][4][5] as well as integration across multiple memories [6][7][8], insight into hidden solutions [9], and even the ability to make creative connections between distantly related ideas and concepts [10]. These findings build upon a strong body of work demonstrating that sleep plays a crucial role in memory consolidation (for reviews [11][12][13]), as well as a highly influential model of how memories are re-organised and strengthened by replay during slow wave sleep (SWS) (see [11,12,[14][15][16][17] and Box 2). This model elegantly explains how the specific physiology of SWS, in combination with the replay of memories that has been observed in both rats and humans during this sleep stage (Box 3), could assist consolidation by transferring memories from a short-term store in the hippocampus to longer term cortical representations. Importantly, however, this model cannot presently explain why sleep is beneficial for gist extraction, insight or the formation of false memories.A separate line of research investigating th...

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Section: Why Sleep?mentioning

confidence: 80%

Overlapping memory replay during sleep builds cognitive schemata

Lewis

Durrant

2011

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Self Cite

458

437

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“…Following the standard approach to sleep scoring (Rechtschaffen and Kales 1968), the data were organised into 30s epochs, bandpass filtered between 0.3Hz and 40Hz to remove low frequency drift and high frequency noise, and visually scored independently by two experienced sleep researchers on the referenced central electrodes (C3-A2 and C4-A1) using standardised sleep scoring criteria. As a relationship between consolidation of statistical information and SWS has previously been found (Durrant, Taylor, et al 2011;Durrant et al 2013), an a priori hypothesis led to a planned correlation looking at the relationship between the behavioural performance on the visual task (visual d') and the amount of SWS obtained. In addition Bonferroni-corrected correlation tests between the other sleep stages (N1, N2, REM) and visual d' were also carried out to fully characterise the sleep-behaviour relationship.…”

Section: Psg Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pickatlas software (Maldjian et al 2003) and based on previous results related to statistical learning and sleep (Durrant, Taylor, et al 2011;Durrant et al 2013), were examined. Whole brain analyses adopt the standard convention of showing results at p=0.001 (uncorrected), while VOI analyses were family-wise error-corrected at p<0.05 using Gaussian random field theory (Worsley et al 1996).…”

Section: A C C E P T E D Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, memory consolidation, and the specific role of sleep in memory consolidation, could play an essential role in abstraction from one modality to another. We previously showed that abstraction of underlying statistical structure was enhanced after consolidation across sleep and predicted by the time spent in slow wave sleep (SWS) (Durrant, Taylor, et al 2011). SWS also predicted a trade-off between recruitment of medial temporal lobe (MTL) and striatum during M A N U S C R I P T…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Cross-modal transfer of statistical information benefits from sleep

Durrant

Cairney

Lewis

2016

Cortex

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Extracting regularities from a sequence of events is essential for understanding our environment. However, there is no consensus regarding the extent to which such regularities can be generalised beyond the modality of learning. One reason for this could be the variation in consolidation intervals used in different paradigms, also including an opportunity to sleep. Using a novel statistical learning paradigm in which structured information is acquired in the auditory domain and tested in the visual domain over either 30min or 24hr consolidation intervals, we show that cross-modal transfer can occur, but this transfer is only seen in the 24hr group. Importantly, the extent of cross-modal transfer is predicted by the amount of SWS obtained. Additionally, cross-modal transfer is associated with the same pattern of decreasing MTL and increasing striatal involvement which has previously been observed to occur across 24 hours in unimodal statistical learning. We also observed enhanced functional connectivity after 24 hours in a network of areas which have been implicated in cross-modal integration including the precuneus and the middle occipital gyrus. Finally, functional connectivity between the striatum and the precuneus was also enhanced, and this strengthening was predicted by SWS. These results demonstrate that statistical learning can generalise to some extent beyond the modality of acquisition, and together with our previously published unimodal results, support the notion that statistical learning is both domain-general and domain-specific.

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“…Although statistical learning was initially implicated in language acquisition, it is a domain-general mechanism, also operating across nonlinguistic stimuli. For example, tracking the relationship between objects and locations helps perceivers to parse complex visual scenes Aslin 2001, 2002), and exposure to tones following a probabilistic pattern enables listeners to recognize novel tone sequences following the same structure (Durrant et al 2011(Durrant et al , 2013. Overall, the function of statistical learning is to enable people to more accurately predict and prepare for incoming input, facilitating the processing of complex stimuli.…”

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confidence: 99%

Functional differences between statistical learning with and without explicit training

2015

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Humans are capable of rapidly extracting regularities from environmental input, a process known as statistical learning. This type of learning typically occurs automatically, through passive exposure to environmental input. The presumed function of statistical learning is to optimize processing, allowing the brain to more accurately predict and prepare for incoming input. In this study, we ask whether the function of statistical learning may be enhanced through supplementary explicit training, in which underlying regularities are explicitly taught rather than simply abstracted through exposure. Learners were randomly assigned either to an explicit group or an implicit group. All learners were exposed to a continuous stream of repeating nonsense words. Prior to this implicit training, learners in the explicit group received supplementary explicit training on the nonsense words. Statistical learning was assessed through a speeded reaction-time (RT) task, which measured the extent to which learners used acquired statistical knowledge to optimize online processing. Both RTs and brain potentials revealed significant differences in online processing as a function of training condition. RTs showed a crossover interaction; responses in the explicit group were faster to predictable targets and marginally slower to less predictable targets relative to responses in the implicit group. P300 potentials to predictable targets were larger in the explicit group than in the implicit group, suggesting greater recruitment of controlled, effortful processes. Taken together, these results suggest that information abstracted through passive exposure during statistical learning may be processed more automatically and with less effort than information that is acquired explicitly.

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Sleep-dependent consolidation of statistical learning

Cited by 171 publications

References 69 publications

Overlapping memory replay during sleep builds cognitive schemata

Overlapping memory replay during sleep builds cognitive schemata

Cross-modal transfer of statistical information benefits from sleep

Functional differences between statistical learning with and without explicit training

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