Sleep facilitates the consolidation of memories. The number of sleep spindles (transient neural events in non rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, 9–15 Hz) in a post-training sleep period correlates with the magnitude of declarative memory improvement (e.g., conscious, episodic memories), whereas minutes in REM sleep correlate with improvement in non-declarative memories (e.g., unconscious, perceptual or sensorimotor skills).
Although the studies report that individual sleep features correlate with improvement in specific memory domains, we do not know if manipulating these sleep features will lead to changes in these precise memory domains. The central aim of this new collaborative project involving our lab and Dr. Sara Mernick’s lab (UC Riverside) is to utilize pharmacological intervention to investigate the specificity of sleep-dependent memory. We are happy to announce that this project is awarded by grant from the National Institute on Aging
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