Better late than never: sleep still supports memory consolidation after prolonged periods of wakefulness
- 1Max Planck Research Group NeuroCode, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195 Berlin, Germany
- 2Max Planck University College London Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Aging Research, 14195 Berlin, Germany
- 3Institute of Psychology, University of Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
- 4Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6GG, United Kingdom
- 5Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9DU, United Kingdom
- 6Department of Psychology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom
- 7York Biomedical Research Institute, University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom
- Corresponding authors: scott.cairney{at}york.ac.uk, marit.petzka{at}gmail.com
Abstract
While the benefits of sleep for associative memory are well established, it is unclear whether single-item memories profit from overnight consolidation to the same extent. We addressed this question in a preregistered, online study and also investigated how the temporal proximity between learning and sleep influences overnight retention. Sleep relative to wakefulness improved retention of item and associative memories to similar extents irrespective of whether sleep occurred soon after learning or following a prolonged waking interval. Our findings highlight the far-reaching influences of sleep on memory that can arise even after substantial periods of wakefulness.
Footnotes
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[Supplemental material is available for this article.]
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Article is online at http://www.learnmem.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/lm.053660.122.
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Freely available online through the Learning & Memory Open Access option.
- Received March 3, 2023.
- Accepted September 4, 2023.
This article, published in Learning & Memory, is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
