The role of dreaming in REM and NREM sleep-dependent memory functions

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Equipment is requested to support a research program for investigating the roles of sleep and dreaming in processes of memory improvement. The equipment will provide tools needed to develop and administer specific types of cognitive and motor tasks that depend upon REM or nonNREM sleep, including a novel set of procedural tasks (postural balance). It will enhance the laboratory's capacity to assess sleep/wake states in both lab and home settings. It will also provide a quality A/V system for sampling lab and home dreams, including components for automating dream collection (phone-based recording), transcription (speech-to-text translation), and content analysis (text-mining). It will allow lab researchers to develop software toolkits to assess complex biosignals during sleep, nonREM EEG sleep spindles in particular. The research program is designed to replicate and extend key discoveries made over the last 20 years demonstrating that REM and nonREM sleep, and to some extent dreaming from these two states, contribute to improvements in a range of cognitive and motor skills requiring different types of memory. The equipment will allow us to address basic questions about dreaming's role in memory such as: 1) Does dreaming about a task lead to improved memory for that task? 2) Are REM and nonREM types of dreams associated with different types of memory (e.g., procedural vs. declarative); 3) Will experimentally increasing dream emotion enhance memory for non-emotional tasks? Using the neurocognitive testing system, healthy subjects will be assessed in a series of studies in which learning tasks known to depend upon REM and nonREM sleep are given before sleep and retested the next day. Polysomnography will be used to monitor sleep and the A/V system used to sample, transcribe, and analyze REM and NREM dreaming. Dream measures are expected to predict improved task learning-independent of sleep measures. It is expected that the findings will replicate and extend discoveries in sleep-related memory consolidation, thus helping to clarify the functions of dreaming and the mechanisms of memory. Findings may also provide novel strategies for memory improvement and rehabilitation.