The Impact of Emotional Salience and Aging on Selective Sleep-Based Memory Consolidation

描述（由申请人提供）：睡眠优先保留记忆中最突出和最有价值的方面，而不是不太相关的细节，但大多数这些挑衅性的研究都是在年轻人身上进行的。人们对睡眠的哪些方面与选择性巩固密切相关，以及这些睡眠现象如何随年龄变化知之甚少。这些研究的目的是检测潜在的机制，以及年龄和显着性相关的影响，潜在的基于睡眠的记忆选择性。基于初步的数据，中心假设是，记忆的显著部分的选择性巩固 将发生在慢波和纺锤波丰富的睡眠期间，情绪显著性压倒其他显著性线索，这些影响将随着年龄的增长而减弱。该项目的基本原理是，对细微的基于睡眠的巩固和情绪的作用的理解超出了年轻人的限制队列，将培养确定该现象中与年龄相关的潜在变化的能力。该研究培训计划包括课程，指导和培训，旨在使候选人能够检查睡眠中选择性记忆巩固的机制和年龄效应。一种新的双午睡模式将被用来控制一天中的时间效应，并利用早，晚午睡的趋势，自然不同的睡眠阶段组成。将招募18 - 39岁（年轻）和45 - 64岁（中年）的受试者参与研究。研究1（n = 90）旨在确定选择性巩固记忆的情感成分的睡眠生理学相关性。受试者将在中性背景上看到负面或中性前景物体的复杂场景，然后小睡或保持清醒。将在睡眠/清醒保持期之前和之后评估单个场景成分（物体、背景）的记忆。研究2（n = 90）将通过检查情绪显著性与另一个任务相关的显著性线索（记住/忘记）的相互作用来评估情绪显著性在选择性睡眠巩固中的相对重要性。在午睡/清醒保持期之前，将呈现负面和中性刺激，每个刺激之后都有一个记住或忘记该项目的提示。将测试对刺激的识别记忆，以直接评估情绪显着性如何影响记住重要信息和忘记无关信息的能力。[An使用功能性MRI的探索性初步研究（n = 15）将遵循研究1的一般方法，以调查检查随着年龄改变的基于睡眠的选择性巩固情绪记忆背后的神经机制的可行性。将分析EEG记录，以确定睡眠分期、频谱频率功率和睡眠纺锤波密度，从而与所有研究中的年龄和记忆表现数据相关联。这些结果将通过澄清健康人群中细微的记忆巩固中衰老，情绪和睡眠之间的相互作用来推动该领域的发展，定位候选人采取关键步骤来确定潜在的神经机制，并为潜在的临床应用建模正常和异常处理。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sleep preferentially preserves aspects of memory that are most salient and valuable to remember over less relevant details, but the majority of these provocative studies were conducted on young adults. Little is known about which aspects of sleep are crucially involved in selective consolidation and how these sleep phenomena vary with age. The objective of the proposed studies is to detect potential mechanisms, and the age- and salience-related influences, underlying sleep-based selectivity in memory. Based on preliminary data, the central hypothesis is that selective consolidation of salient parts of memory will occur during sleep rich in slow waves and spindles, with emotional salience overriding other salience cues, and that these effects will decrease with age. The rationale for this project is tha an understanding of nuanced sleep-based consolidation and the role of emotion beyond the restricted cohort of young adults will foster the ability to determine the underlying age-related changes in the phenomenon. This research training program includes coursework, mentoring, and training designed to enable the candidate to examine mechanisms of, and age-effects on, selective memory consolidation in sleep. A novel dual nap paradigm will be used to control for time-of-day effects and to capitalize on the tendency of early and late naps to naturally differ with respect to sleep stage composition. Subjects 18-39 years (young) and 45-64 years (middle age) will be recruited to participate. Study 1 (n=90) will aim to identify sleep physiology correlates of selective consolidation of emotional components of memory. Subjects will be shown complex scenes of negative or neutral foreground objects on neutral backgrounds and then nap or remain awake. Memory for individual scene components (objects, backgrounds) will be assessed both before and after the sleep/wake retention period. Study 2 (n=90) will assess the relative importance of emotional salience in selective sleep-based consolidation by examining the interaction of emotional salience with another task-related salience cue (remember/forget). Negative and neutral stimuli will be presented, each followed by a cue to remember or forget the item, before a nap/wake retention period. Recognition memory for stimuli will be tested to directly assess how emotional salience influences the ability to remember important and forget irrelevant information. [An exploratory pilot study (n=15) using functional MRI will follow the general methods of Study 1 to investigate the feasibility of examining the neural mechanisms behind altered sleep-based selective consolidation of emotional memory with age.] EEG recordings will be analyzed to determine sleep staging, spectral frequency power, and sleep spindle density to correlate with age and memory performance data in all studies. The results will move the field forward by clarifying the interaction between aging, emotion, and sleep in nuanced memory consolidation in a healthy population, positioning the candidate to take a crucial step to- ward determining the underlying neural mechanisms, and modeling normal and abnormal processing for potential clinical applications.