Abstract
Recent research has suggested that some of the inter-individual variation in sleep spindle activity is due to innate learning ability. Sleep spindles have also been observed to vary following learning in both young and older adults. We examined the effect of procedural task acquisition on sleep stages and on sleep spindles in an adolescent sample. Participants were 32 adolescents (17 females) between the ages of 12 and 19 years. Spindle activity was examined in three different frequency ranges: 11.00–13.50 Hz (slow), 13.51–16.00 Hz (fast), and 16.01–18.50 Hz (superfast). No changes in spindle density were observed after successful learning of the pursuit rotor task. This result was in contrast to a number of studies reporting spindle density increases following successful learning. In the present study, participants who successfully learned the task showed no changes in their sleep stage proportions, but participants who were not successful showed a decrease in the proportion of stage 2 and increases in both SWS and REM sleep. We suggest that these changes in the sleep stages are consistent with the two stage model of sleep and memory proposed by Smith et al. (2004a).
Highlights
Sleep spindles are a hallmark of stage 2 sleep, often used as the defining characteristic of stage 2 onset
They are commonly considered to have a frequency range of 11–16 Hz; this range is often further divided into two types of sleep spindles, with slow spindles having a frequency range of approximately 11–13.5 Hz and fast spindles having a frequency range of 13.5–16 Hz (Zeitlhofer et al, 1997; DeGennaro and Ferrara, 2003; Fogel and Smith, 2011; Nader and Smith, 2015)
The measure used to assess degree of learning was the number of seconds that the subject was able to keep the cursor on a lighted dot as it moved around the path
Summary
Sleep spindles are a hallmark of stage 2 sleep, often used as the defining characteristic of stage 2 onset. Using automated spindle counters allowed us to filter out electroencephalography (EEG) frequencies that were not of interest to us, and to focus on specific frequency ranges (Ray et al, 2009). This has resulted in better detection of the various types of spindles, as well as increased detection in sleep stages other than stage 2 including REM sleep (Gaillard and Blois, 1981; Zeitlhofer et al, 1997; Nader and Smith, 2015)
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