During sleep, recently acquired episodic memories (i.e., autobiographical memories for specific events) are strengthened and transformed, a process termed consolidation. These memories are contextual in nature, with details of specific features interwoven with more general properties such as the time and place of the event. In this study, we hypothesized that the context in which a memory is embedded would guide the process of consolidation during sleep. To test this idea, we used a spatial memory task and considered changes in memory over a 10-h period including either sleep or wake. In both conditions, participants (N = 62) formed stories that contextually bound four objects together and then encoded the on-screen spatial position of all objects. Results showed that the changes in memory over the sleep period were correlated among contextually linked objects, whereas no such effect was identified for the wake group. These results demonstrate that context-binding plays an important role in memory consolidation during sleep.

中文翻译：

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上下文很重要：一段睡眠期间记忆的变化是由编码上下文驱动的

在睡眠期间，最近获得的情景记忆（即特定事件的自传体记忆）得到加强和转化，这一过程称为巩固。这些记忆本质上是上下文相关的，特定特征的细节与事件的时间和地点等更一般的属性交织在一起。在这项研究中，我们假设嵌入记忆的环境会指导睡眠期间的巩固过程。为了测试这个想法，我们使用了空间记忆任务，并考虑了 10 小时内的记忆变化，包括睡眠或清醒。在这两种情况下，参与者 ( N= 62) 形成的故事将四个对象关联在一起，然后编码所有对象在屏幕上的空间位置。结果表明，睡眠期间记忆的变化与上下文关联的对象相关，而清醒组没有发现这种影响。这些结果表明上下文绑定在睡眠期间的记忆巩固中起着重要作用。