Abstract
A wealth of recent studies support a function of sleep on memory and cognitive processing. At a physiological level, sleep supports memory in a number of ways including neural replay and enhanced plasticity in the context of reduced ongoing input. This paper presents behavioral evidence for sleep’s role in selective remembering and forgetting of declarative memories, in generalization of these memories, and in motor skill consolidation. Recent physiological data reviewed suggests how these behavioral changes might be supported by sleep. Importantly, in reviewing these findings, an integrated view of how distinct sleep stages uniquely contribute to memory processing emerges. This model will be useful in developing future behavioral and physiological studies to test predictions that emerge.
Highlights
There is a pervasive belief that sleep is a period of physical and mental inactivity and this inactivity allows us to be “refreshed” upon waking
According to the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis proposed by Tononi and colleagues [111, 112], synaptic potentiation, which increases over wake, is decreased over sleep
A number of studies have demonstrated that participants are more accurate in recalling to-beremembered words compared to to-be-forgotten words
Summary
There is a pervasive belief that sleep is a period of physical and mental inactivity and this inactivity allows us to be “refreshed” upon waking Perhaps for this reason, we often dismiss the elementary mistakes made by sleep-deprived new parents, the emotionality of a napless child, and the poor performance of a jet-lagged sports team. In 1959, radio personality Peter Tripp provided the ultimate test of sleep deprivation by staying awake for 201 hrs. Few recent papers have integrated human behavior with neurophysiological results, which largely emerge from animal research. To be fair, such a review may be premature, given that this integration requires speculation and the assumption that human and animal sleep are similar enough to be inferred across models. We commence with such a review and a speculative model in order to provoke both sides, the animal physiologists and human behaviorists, to consider how they might relate and, in doing so, to identify collective gaps
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