Sleep-dependent prospective memory consolidation is impaired with aging

Abstract

Study Objectives Existing literature suggests that sleep-dependent memory consolidation is impaired in older adults but may be preserved for personally relevant information. Prospective memory (PM) involves remembering to execute future intentions in a timely manner and has behavioural importance. As previous work suggests that N3 sleep is important for PM in young adults, we investigated if the role of N3 sleep in PM consolidation would be maintained in older adults. Methods 49 young adults (mean age±SD:21.8±1.61 years) and 49 healthy older adults (mean age±SD:65.7±6.30 years) were randomized into sleep and wake groups. After a semantic categorization task, participants encoded intentions comprising 4 related and 4 unrelated cue-action pairs. They were instructed to remember to perform these actions in response to cue words presented during a second semantic categorization task 12h later that encompassed either daytime wake (09:00-21:00) or overnight sleep with polysomnography (21:00-09:00). Results The significant condition x age group x relatedness interaction suggested that the sleep benefit on PM intentions varied according to age group and relatedness (p=0.01). For related intentions, sleep relative to wake benefitted young adults’ performance (p<0.001) but not older adults (p = 0.30). For unrelated intentions, sleep did not improve PM for either age group. While post-encoding N3 was significantly associated with related intentions’ execution in young adults (r=0.43, p=0.02), this relationship was not found for older adults (r=-0.07, p=0.763). Conclusions The age-related impairment of sleep-dependent memory consolidation extends to PM. Our findings add to an existing body of work suggesting that the link between sleep and memory is functionally weakened in older adulthood.

Sleep-dependent memory consolidation in breast cancer: Use of a virtual reality prospective memory task

“…The lack of significant association could be explained by the low variability of this spindle feature. However, this result is consistent with previous studies conducted in healthy adults and revealing no significant association between sleep spindles and retrieval of intentions ( Scullin et al, 2019 ; Leong et al, 2021 ).…”

“…However, these results are not consistently reported since Cunningham et al (2021) found a negative association between SWS and PM performance in young adults. In the study by Leong et al (2021), while older adults had lower PM performance and spent less time in SWS than young adults, no significant relation was found between SWS and PM in the older group. The authors suggested that the role of SWS on 10.3389/fnins.2022.908268 PM consolidation may be disrupted and thus ineffective in older adults.…”

“…Thus, these awakenings did not modify sleep architecture of BC patients. Concerning PM, SWS appears to be involved in the consolidation of intentions in young adults ( Diekelmann et al, 2013a ; Leong et al, 2019b , 2021 ). However, these results are not consistently reported since Cunningham et al (2021) found a negative association between SWS and PM performance in young adults.…”

Sleep preferentially consolidates negative aspects of human memory: Well-powered evidence from two large online experiments

“…One important dimension of generalizability is how consistent the effects of sleep on emotional memory are across the life span. Aging is characterized by marked changes in sleep quality and physiology, which are implicated in changes in and deterioration of sleep-based memory consolidation ( 44 – 52 ). By older age, there also can be a diminution of negative memory biases and a shift toward positive memory ( 53 , 54 ), a shift that is also seen in sleep-based memory processing ( 55 ).…”

The Prospective Sleeping Brain: Age-Related Differences in Episodic Future Thinking and Frontal Sleep Spindles

“…Memory consolidation is presumed to be a building block of overall cognitive functioning, with cognitive functioning known to decline progressively across the adult life span to the point that independent living becomes disrupted (e.g., early stages of Alzheimer disease and related dementias). The preponderance of evidence points to memory consolidation being reduced or absent even in healthy older adults (Leong, Lo, & Chee, 2021;Jones, Mackay, Mantua, Schultz, & Spencer, 2018;Gui et al, 2017). However, researchers are still determining the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms by which memory consolidation declines with aging (Scullin & Gao, 2018;Mander, Winer, & Walker, 2017).…”