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Sleep benefits subsequent hippocampal functioning

Abstract

Sleep before learning benefits memory encoding through unknown mechanisms. We found that even a mild sleep disruption that suppressed slow-wave activity and induced shallow sleep, but did not reduce total sleep time, was sufficient to affect subsequent successful encoding-related hippocampal activation and memory performance in healthy human subjects. Implicit learning was not affected. Our results suggest that the hippocampus is particularly sensitive to shallow, but intact, sleep.

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Figure 1: Changes in sleep spectral density after shallow-sleep induction.
Figure 2: Shallow sleep affects hippocampal activation.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank K. Plugge, I. Beckmann and R. Strijers for assistance in subject screening. This study was funded by the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research, the Hague, VIDI Innovation Grants 016.025.041 and 016.095.359, Integrated Cognition Project Grant 051-04-010, and by Internationale Stichting Alzheimer Onderzoek grant 05511. Financial support for imaging costs was supplied by the Graduate School Neurosciences Amsterdam.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Y.D.v.d.W. carried out the data acquisitions, the fMRI and EEG analyses, and wrote the manuscript. E.A. performed the data acquisitions and co-wrote the manuscript. M.M.S. and E.J.S.-A. carried out the fMRI analyses. J.C.V. performed the sleep scoring. W.d.R. devised the sleep manipulation tool. E.J.W.v.S. supervised the project, performed the statistical analyses of the EEG data and co-wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ysbrand D Van Der Werf.

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Supplementary Figure 1, Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 and Supplementary Methods (PDF 231 kb)

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Van Der Werf, Y., Altena, E., Schoonheim, M. et al. Sleep benefits subsequent hippocampal functioning. Nat Neurosci 12, 122–123 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2253

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