Rule Abstraction is Facilitated by Auditory Cueing in REM Sleep

Abstract

Sleep facilitates abstraction, but the mechanisms underpinning this are unknown. Here, we tested whether this benefit can be boosted by targeted memory reactivation (TMR) in sleep. To determine which sleep stage is more critical, we paired abstraction problems with sounds which were subsequently replayed during slow wave sleep (SWS) or rapid eye movement sleep (REM). Our EEG classifiers distinguished between experimental and control sounds in both SWS and REM, suggesting successful reactivation in both stages. However, experimental sounds only triggered distinct P300 responses in REM. Similarly, we found a dissociation between sleep stages as abstraction improved for problems cued in REM, but not for those cued in SWS. Interestingly, performance improvement was not significant until one week after the manipulation, suggesting that REM reactivation may initiate a sequence of plasticity events that requires more time to be implemented. Overall, our findings suggest that TMR in REM can facilitate rule abstraction.