Rule Abstraction Is Facilitated by Auditory Cuing in REM Sleep

Pereira, Sofia Isabel Ribeiro; Santamaria, Lorena; Andrews, Ralph; Schmidt, Elena; Van Rossum, Mark C.W.; Lewis, Penelope

Abstract

Sleep facilitates abstraction, but the exact mechanisms underpinning this are unknown. Here, we aimed to determine whether triggering reactivation in sleep could facilitate this process. We paired abstraction problems with sounds, then replayed these during either slow-wave sleep (SWS) or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep to trigger memory reactivation in 27 human participants (19 female). This revealed performance improvements on abstraction problems that were cued in REM, but not problems cued in SWS. Interestingly, the cue-related improvement was not significant until a follow-up retest 1 week after the manipulation, suggesting that REM may initiate a sequence of plasticity events that requires more time to be implemented. Furthermore, memory-linked trigger sounds evoked distinct neural responses in REM, but not SWS. Overall, our findings suggest that targeted memory reactivation in REM can facilitate visual rule abstraction, although this effect takes time to unfold.

Citation

Pereira, S. I. R., Santamaria, L., Andrews, R., Schmidt, E., Van Rossum, M. C., & Lewis, P. (2023). Rule Abstraction Is Facilitated by Auditory Cuing in REM Sleep. Journal of Neuroscience, 43(21), 3838-3848. https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.1966-21.2022

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 22, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Mar 28, 2023
• Publication Date: May 24, 2023
• Deposit Date: Aug 19, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 25, 2023
• Journal: Journal of Neuroscience
• Electronic ISSN: 1529-2401
• Publisher: Society for Neuroscience
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 43
• Issue: 21
• Pages: 3838-3848
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.1966-21.2022
• Keywords: Gist; REM sleep; rule abstraction; sleep; synthetic visual reasoning task; targeted memory reactivation
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/19010035
• Publisher URL: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/43/21/3838