Targeted memory reactivation during non-rapid eye movement sleep enhances neutral, but not negative, components of memory

Dan Denis; Jessica D. Payne

doi:10.1101/2023.05.26.542120

Targeted memory reactivation during non-rapid eye movement sleep enhances neutral, but not negative, components of memory

Dan Denis^*, Jessica D. Payne

^*Corresponding author for this work

Psychology

Research output: Working paper › Preprint

Abstract

Emotionally salient components of memory are preferentially remembered at the expense of accompanying neutral information. This emotional memory trade-off is enhanced over time, and possibly sleep, though a process of memory consolidation. Sleep is believed to benefit memory through a process of reactivation during non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). Here, targeted memory reactivation (TMR) was used to manipulate the reactivation of negative and neutral memories during NREM sleep. Thirty-one male and female participants encoded scenes containing either a negative or neutral object superimposed on an always neutral background. During NREM sleep, sounds associated with these scenes were replayed, and memory for scene components was tested the following morning. We found that TMR during NREM sleep improved memory for neutral, but not negative scene objects. This effect was associated with sleep spindle activity, with a larger spindle response following TMR cues predicting TMR effectiveness for neutral items only. These findings therefore do not suggest a role of NREM memory reactivation in enhancing the emotional memory trade-off across a 12-hour period but do align with growing evidence of spindle-mediated memory reactivation in service of neutral declarative memory.

Original language	English
Publisher	bioRxiv, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.26.542120
Publication status	Published - 26 May 2023

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10.1101/2023.05.26.542120Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Targeted memory reactivation during non-rapid eye movement sleep enhances neutral, but not negative, components of memory",

abstract = "Emotionally salient components of memory are preferentially remembered at the expense of accompanying neutral information. This emotional memory trade-off is enhanced over time, and possibly sleep, though a process of memory consolidation. Sleep is believed to benefit memory through a process of reactivation during non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). Here, targeted memory reactivation (TMR) was used to manipulate the reactivation of negative and neutral memories during NREM sleep. Thirty-one male and female participants encoded scenes containing either a negative or neutral object superimposed on an always neutral background. During NREM sleep, sounds associated with these scenes were replayed, and memory for scene components was tested the following morning. We found that TMR during NREM sleep improved memory for neutral, but not negative scene objects. This effect was associated with sleep spindle activity, with a larger spindle response following TMR cues predicting TMR effectiveness for neutral items only. These findings therefore do not suggest a role of NREM memory reactivation in enhancing the emotional memory trade-off across a 12-hour period but do align with growing evidence of spindle-mediated memory reactivation in service of neutral declarative memory.",

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AB - Emotionally salient components of memory are preferentially remembered at the expense of accompanying neutral information. This emotional memory trade-off is enhanced over time, and possibly sleep, though a process of memory consolidation. Sleep is believed to benefit memory through a process of reactivation during non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). Here, targeted memory reactivation (TMR) was used to manipulate the reactivation of negative and neutral memories during NREM sleep. Thirty-one male and female participants encoded scenes containing either a negative or neutral object superimposed on an always neutral background. During NREM sleep, sounds associated with these scenes were replayed, and memory for scene components was tested the following morning. We found that TMR during NREM sleep improved memory for neutral, but not negative scene objects. This effect was associated with sleep spindle activity, with a larger spindle response following TMR cues predicting TMR effectiveness for neutral items only. These findings therefore do not suggest a role of NREM memory reactivation in enhancing the emotional memory trade-off across a 12-hour period but do align with growing evidence of spindle-mediated memory reactivation in service of neutral declarative memory.

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