Formation and suppression of acoustic memories during human sleep
Thomas Andrillon, Daniel Pressnitzer, Damien Léger & Sid Kouider
Nature Communications 8, Article number: 179 (2017)
doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00071-z
Human behaviour Perception Sleep
Received: 13 April 2016
Accepted: 30 May 2017
Published online: 08 August 2017
Abstract
Sleep and memory are deeply related, but the nature of the neuroplastic processes induced by sleep remains unclear. Here, we report that memory traces can be both formed or suppressed during sleep, depending on sleep phase. We played samples of acoustic noise to sleeping human listeners. Repeated exposure to a novel noise during Rapid Eye Movements (REM) or light non-REM (NREM) sleep leads to improvements in behavioral performance upon awakening. Strikingly, the same exposure during deep NREM sleep leads to impaired performance upon awakening. Electroencephalographic markers of learning extracted during sleep confirm a dissociation between sleep facilitating memory formation (light NREM and REM sleep) and sleep suppressing learning (deep NREM sleep). We can trace these neural changes back to transient sleep events, such as spindles for memory facilitation and slow waves for suppression. Thus, highly selective memory processes are active during human sleep, with intertwined episodes of facilitative and suppressive plasticity.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by ANR grants (ANR-10-LABX-0087 and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02), by the European Research Council (ERC project METAWARE to S.K. and ERC project ADAM to D.P.), by the EU H2020 program (COCOHA #644732 to DP), and by the Ministère de la Recherche and the Société Française de Recherche et Médecine du Sommeil (T.A.). We thank V. Bayon, A. Dalbin, L. de Sanctis, M. Elbaz, S. Rio, and C. Varazzani for their help.
Author information
Affiliations
Brain and Consciousness Group (ENS, EHESS, CNRS), Département d’Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure-PSL Research University, Paris, 75005, France
Thomas Andrillon & Sid Kouider
École Doctorale Cerveau Cognition Comportement, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, 75005, France
Thomas Andrillon
Laboratoire des Systèmes Perceptifs, CNRS UMR 8248, Département d’Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure-PSL Research University, Paris, 75005, France
Daniel Pressnitzer
Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, APHP, Hôtel Dieu, Centre du Sommeil et de la Vigilance et EA 7330 VIFASOM, Paris, 75006, France
Damien Léger
Contributions
T.A., D.P., D.L., and S.K. designed the study. T.A. collected and analyzed the data. T.A., D.P., D.L., and S.K. wrote the paper.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Corresponding authors
Correspondence to Thomas Andrillon or Sid Kouider.
