Autonomic Activity During Sleep Predicts Memory Consolidation in Humans
Autonomic activity during sleep predicts memory consolidation in humans Lauren N. Whitehursta,1, Nicola Cellinia,b,1, Elizabeth A. McDevitta, Katherine A. Duggana, and Sara C. Mednicka,2 aDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521; and bDepartment of General Psychology, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy Edited by Thomas D. Albright, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, and approved May 6, 2016 (received for review September 12, 2015) Throughout history, psychologists and philosophers have proposed a feedback loop allowing for bidirectional communication between that good sleep benefits memory, yet current studies focusing on central memory areas and peripheral sites (12–14) (Fig. 1). the relationship between traditionally reported sleep features (e.g., Accordingly, vagus nerve lesions have been shown to impair minutes in sleep stages) and changes in memory performance show memory (15, 16). In rats, pairing vagal nerve stimulation with au- contradictory findings. This discrepancy suggests that there are ditory stimuli has been shown to reorganize neural circuits (17) and events occurring during sleep that have not yet been considered. strengthen neural response to speech sounds in the auditory cortex The autonomic nervous system (ANS) shows strong variation (18). Also, vagal stimulation has been shown to boost neural rep- across sleep stages. Also, increases in ANS activity during waking, resentations of paired movements in the motor cortex (19) and to as measured by heart rate variability (HRV), have been correlated enhance extinction learning of fear memories (20). In humans, vagal with memory improvement. However, the role of ANS in sleep- nerve stimulation during verbal memory consolidation enhances dependent memory consolidation has never been examined.
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