Neuroscience: How Sleep Builds Relational Memory

"Relational memory is the ability to remember arbitrary or indirect associations between objects, people, or events, such as names with faces, where you left your car keys, and whether you turned off the stove after cooking but before you left the house.

Previous research has established that animal and human memory benefits from sufficient, quality sleep. In a new study, published May 25, 2022, in the Journal of Neuroscience, Maxim Bazhenov, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, and Timothy Tadros, a graduate student in his lab, describe the underlying mechanisms that strengthen or create new relational memories during sleep.

The authors developed an artificial model of two regions of the brain: the thalamic (involved in earlier sensory processing) and the cortical (involved in memory, learning, and decision-making). The model was capable of simulating two major brain states: awake when neurons are spontaneously active and optimized to process sensory input and deep sleep when intrinsic oscillations of electrical activity are generated, such as slow waves.

One important real-world impact of the study is in informing future studies of disease, such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder,” said Bazhenov. “Studies have shown that people with these conditions perform worse on relational memory tasks and also have disrupted sleep, specifically slow-wave sleep.

“Our study suggests that focusing on improving slow-wave sleep in order to alleviate some of the cognitive symptoms associated with these conditions may be a more fruitful path forward than focusing on the cognitive symptoms exclusively.”

The authors also noted that memory function and sleep quality decline with age, but current or new technologies that augment sleep oscillations may help protect and improve memory function in older adults."

Read the full article here

#Sleep #Memory #Neuroscience #Cognition