Sleep and Social Memory Consolidation

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Sleep and Social Memory Consolidation Amanda Santamaria1*, Owen Churches2, Alex Chatburn3, Hannah Keage1 and Mark Kohler1 1 University of South Australia, Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Australia 2 Flinders University, Brain and Cognition Laboratory, Australia 3 University of South Australia, Centre for Sleep Research, Australia Social memory refers to the learning, consolidation and recall of social information that is crucial to interpersonal interaction. Face recognition is one feature of social interaction that can be investigated in a social memory paradigm. It is commonly recognized that active neurophysiological processes occurring during sleep aid learning and consolidation of information in general, yet little is known about whether sleep is important for learning and consolidation of social memories. The current study examines whether sleep facilitates recall of social stimuli in comparison to an equal period of time awake. Sixteen adults aged 19-29 years (14 female) took part in an experimental repeated measures design, which tested social memory performance immediately after learning and at two different delayed recall time points in both a sleep-first and wake-first condition. Sleep was quantified using polysomnography in both conditions. To test social memory performance, participants were asked to identify a set of learned target faces from a set of distractor faces. Overall memory performance scores decreased after periods of wake (F(1.44,21.58)=21.17, p<.001) but were maintained after immediate or delayed sleep periods (p=.22). As such, sleep was found to serve as a protective function for newly encoded social memories, rather than actively enhancing consolidation. Differences were also found between sleep-first and wake-first groups for correct identification of target faces, where the wake-first group missed more target faces(F(1,15)=6.75, p=.02). Even though sleep was found to be important to the consolidation of social memory and maintenance of social learning, no specific aspects of sleep architecture were associated with social memory performance. The results suggest that sleep acts as a protective factor against memory deterioration for social memories, however the precise neurophysiological characteristics of sleep important for this effect are yet to be determined. Keywords: Polysomnography, Sleep, EEG, faces, Social Memory, memory consolidation Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Memory and Learning Citation: Santamaria A, Churches O, Chatburn A, Keage H and Kohler M (2015). Sleep and Social Memory Consolidation. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00399 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Miss. Amanda Santamaria, University of South Australia, Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Adelaide, Australia, amanda.santamaria@mymail.unisa.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Amanda Santamaria Owen Churches Alex Chatburn Hannah Keage Mark Kohler Google Amanda Santamaria Owen Churches Alex Chatburn Hannah Keage Mark Kohler Google Scholar Amanda Santamaria Owen Churches Alex Chatburn Hannah Keage Mark Kohler PubMed Amanda Santamaria Owen Churches Alex Chatburn Hannah Keage Mark Kohler Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.