Changes in Sleep Based on Waking Experience

Presenter

Hirni Dipak Patel

Group Members

Rachna R. Nambiar, Nicholas John Vovcsko, Gideon Elias Touchette, Laurel Louise Ralph

Campus

UMass Amherst

Sponsor

Rebecca Spencer, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, UMass Amherst

Schedule

Session 5, 3:30 PM - 4:15 PM [Schedule by Time][Poster Grid for Time/Location]

Location

Poster Board A83, Campus Center Auditorium, Row 5 (A81-A100) [Poster Location Map]

Abstract

Traditionally, sleep has been defined as an all-or-nothing, global state. This idea is contrasted by local sleep, which is characterized by transient periods of brain activity within specific brain regions during sleep. A previous study showed increased slow wave activity (SWA) following learning of a motor task compared to sleep following a control condition. Interestingly, this increase was in the parietal cortex, which contributes to motor learning (Huber et al., 2004). Here we ask a simple question: does this local sleep response also occur during non-motor/declarative memory tasks? This study aims to answer this question by recruiting healthy young adults ages 18-25. Over a total of two overnight sessions and 1 wake session, participants performed encoding and immediate memory recall tasks, followed by a delayed recall task ~8 hours later, as well as a non-learning session during which they passively observed sham word pairs. We predict we will see changes in sleep EEG over cortical regions associated with learning of word pairs relative to sleep following a non-learning control condition. Essential structures for declarative learning are located in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), as well as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). These include the hippocampal region (CA fields, dentate gyrus, and subicular complex) and the adjacent perirhinal, entorhinal, and parahippocampal cortices (Squire et al., 2004; Gais et al., 2007). In addition, if we observe local sleep, we will then consider whether local sleep predicts memory consolidation (the change in memory from pre- to post-sleep).

Keywords

declarative memory, sleep, slow wave activity, local sleep, EEG

Research Area

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences

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