The influence of time between learning and sleep on memory consolidation in adolescents

尽管睡眠对记忆巩固的重要影响越来越多，但仍不清楚青少年的记忆巩固是否受到获得新知识或技能与睡眠之间的时间间隔的调节。拟议的研究项目将测试这样的假设：与学习和就寝之间感觉输入有限的临时清醒期后的睡眠相比，学习后直接睡眠显着促进程序性和陈述性记忆巩固。这是一项平行组设计的随机比较研究。52名健康青春期后青少年（16-17岁，26名女性，26名男性，年龄和性别匹配，并按智商、动机和晨起/晚起类型分层）将被分配到两种条件下，进行多导睡眠监测：第1组（n = 26）将在下午完成具有口头和视觉陈述任务以及程序技能的测试组，剩下的下午进行标准化、有监督的活动，然后看电影并上床睡觉;第2组（n = 26）将在下午观看电影，并在晚上临睡前完成相同的测试组合。第二天早上，两组学生都将被重新测试。这项研究项目的结果有望增加我们对睡眠对青少年记忆形成影响的认识，最终目标是将这些信息转化为青少年的学习策略。

Despite the increasing insights into the significant impact of sleep on memory consolidation it is still unclear whether memory consolidation in adolescents is modulated by the length of the time interval between the acquisition of new knowledge or skills and sleep. The proposed research project will test the hypothesis that sleep directly after learning significantly facilitates procedural and declarative memory consolidation compared to sleep after an interim waking period with limited sensory input between learning and bedtime.This is a randomised, comparison study in a parallel group design. 52 healthy post-pubertal adolescents (16-17 years, 26 females, 26 males, matched for age and gender, and stratified for IQ, motivation and morningness/ eveningness types) will be allocated to two conditions with polysomnographic monitoring: group 1 (n = 26) will complete a test battery with verbal and visual declarative tasks and a procedural skill in the afternoon, spend the remaining afternoon with standardised, supervised activities, watch a movie afterwards and go to bed; group 2 (n = 26) will watch the movie in the afternoon and complete the same test battery in the evening, immediately before going to sleep. Both groups will be retested on the following morning.Results from this research project are expected to increase our knowledge on the impact of sleep on memory formation in adolescents with the ultimate goal being a translation of this informa-tion into learning strategies for adolescents.