Abstract
Sleep is known to benefit consolidation of memories, especially those of motivational relevance. Yet, it remains largely unknown the extent to which sleep influences reward-associated behavior, in particular, whether and how sleep modulates reward evaluation that critically underlies value-based decisions. Here, we show that neural processing during sleep can selectively bias preferences in simple economic choices when the sleeper is stimulated by covert, reward-associated cues. Specifically, presenting the spoken name of a familiar, valued snack item during midday nap significantly improves the preference for that item relative to items not externally cued. The cueing-specific preference enhancement is sleep-dependent and can be predicted by cue-induced neurophysiological signals at the subject and item level. Computational modeling further suggests that sleep cueing accelerates evidence accumulation for cued options during the post-sleep choice process in a manner consistent with the preference shift. These findings suggest that neurocognitive processing during sleep contributes to the fine-tuning of subjective preferences in a flexible, selective manner.
Highlights
Sleep complements wakefulness by supporting an array of cognitive functions
Subjects were first introduced to a set of 60 familiar snack items, and indicated their willingness-to-pay (WTP) in a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) auction (Becker et al, 1964), which served as a measure of the baseline preference for a snack item ( WTP1) (Plassmann et al, 2007; Hare et al, 2008; Schonberg et al, 2014)
We investigated how the sleeping brain processed the spoken name of a snack and how such processing contributed to post-sleep behavior using event-related potential (ERP) data measured in a subset of sleep group participants (N = 23; Supplementary file 1, Table 1D, Table 1E; Materials and methods)
Summary
Sleep complements wakefulness by supporting an array of cognitive functions. Its role in complex behavior such as value-based decision-making remains to be explored. Substantial evidence suggests that the storage of reward-related information does not stay sedentary during sleep. Spontaneous neural activation has been observed in the ventral striatum
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