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

描述(申请人提供)：睡眠优先保留记忆中最重要和最有价值的部分，而不是相关的细节，但这些挑衅性的研究大多是在年轻人身上进行的。关于睡眠的哪些方面与选择性巩固有关，以及这些睡眠现象如何随着年龄的变化而变化，人们知之甚少。这项研究的目的是发现记忆中基于睡眠的选择性的潜在机制，以及与年龄和显着性相关的影响。根据初步数据，中心假设是选择性地巩固记忆的显著部分 在睡眠中会出现大量的慢波和纺锤波，情绪上的突出会压倒其他突出的暗示，这些影响会随着年龄的增长而减弱。这个项目的基本原理是，了解基于睡眠的细微差别巩固，以及超越有限的年轻人队列的情绪的作用，将培养确定这一现象潜在的与年龄相关的变化的能力。这项研究培训计划包括课程作业、指导和培训，旨在使应试者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，并利用早睡和晚睡在睡眠阶段组成方面自然不同的趋势。将招募18-39岁(青年)和45-(中年)的受试者参加。研究1(n=90)的目的是确定选择性巩固记忆的情绪成分与睡眠生理学的相关性。受试者将被展示在中性背景上的负面或中性前景物体的复杂场景，然后打盹或保持清醒。将在睡眠/唤醒保持期之前和之后评估单个场景组件(对象、背景)的记忆。研究2(n=90)将通过考察情绪突显与另一个任务相关的突显线索(记住/忘记)的交互作用来评估情绪突显在选择性睡眠巩固中的相对重要性。将呈现消极和中性的刺激，每个刺激之后都会有一个提示，让你记住或忘记这一项，然后是午睡/清醒保持期。将测试对刺激的识别记忆，以直接评估情绪突显如何影响记住重要信息和忘记无关信息的能力。[一项使用功能磁共振成像的探索性初步研究(n=15)将遵循研究1的一般方法，以调查随着年龄增长而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。]将对脑电记录进行分析，以确定睡眠分期、频谱功率和睡眠纺锤密度，以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差别记忆巩固中衰老、情绪和睡眠之间的相互作用来推动这一领域的发展，为确定潜在的神经机制和为潜在的临床应用模拟正常和异常的处理过程定位候选者迈出关键的一步。

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.