Sleep-Dependent Preservation of Emotional Memory: EEG and FMRI Investigations

我们为什么要睡觉？我们一生中将近三分之一的时间都在睡觉。越来越多的证据表明，睡眠的一个目的是加强白天形成的记忆，特别是如果这些记忆是情绪化的。在国家科学基金会的支持下，波士顿学院的伊丽莎白·肯辛格博士、圣母大学的杰西卡·佩恩博士、贝丝以色列医院的鲍勃·斯蒂克戈尔德博士以及他们的学生正在评估睡眠在记忆形成中的作用，重点研究在睡眠延迟的情况下，情绪体验的记忆是如何变化的。特别是，这项研究考察了睡眠如何有助于维持记忆中的情绪权衡，即人们很难记住靠近情绪项目的信息，尽管他们对情绪项目本身的记忆非常好。这项研究结合了脑电(EEG)、功能磁共振成像(FMRI)和行为方法，研究了睡眠的不同阶段如何导致用于提取情绪记忆的神经回路的重新连接，以及这种重新连接如何受到情绪事件第一次体验的方式的影响。在患有抑郁症和焦虑症的人中，记忆的权衡被放大，这两种障碍都与睡眠的戏剧性变化有关。因此，了解这些记忆权衡发展和长期保存的认知和神经机制，对于了解健康和功能失调的情绪处理都是至关重要的。此外，认知神经科学的一个长期问题是，情绪体验的记忆是如何随着时间的推移而巩固的，而研究睡眠对记忆权衡的影响提供了一个难得的窗口，可以通过它来观察巩固过程的作用。研究睡眠对记忆权衡的影响也提供了一种方法来回答睡眠和记忆研究领域最令人困惑的问题之一，即依赖睡眠的巩固过程如何优先选择体验的某些方面进行长期存储，同时允许记忆的其他方面被遗忘。除了对认知神经科学和临床心理学研究做出贡献外，该项目的资金还促进了波士顿学院神经科学项目的发展，并帮助圣母大学开展了神经科学研究。此外，该项目正在促进波士顿学院、贝丝以色列医院和巴黎圣母院之间富有成效的合作，使学生能够从所有三个地点的培训中受益。该项目为本科生的学习提供了丰富的研究基础设施，为他们提供了接触脑电、功能磁共振成像和行为评估的机会。

Why do we sleep? We spend nearly one-third of our lives sleeping. Growing evidence suggests that one purpose of sleep is to strengthen memories formed during the day, particularly if these memories are emotional. With the support of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Elizabeth Kensinger (Boston College), Dr. Jessica Payne (Notre Dame), Dr. Bob Stickgold (Beth Israel hospital), and their students are assessing the role of sleep in memory formation, focusing on how memory for emotional experiences changes over sleep-filled delays. In particular, this research examines how sleep contributes to the maintenance of an emotional trade-off in memory, whereby people have difficulty remembering information presented in close proximity to an emotional item, although they remember the emotional item itself extremely well. This research combines electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and behavioral methods in examing how different phases of sleep can lead to re-wiring of the neural circuits used to retrieve emotional memories, and how such re-wiring is influenced by the way an emotional event is first experienced. Memory trade-offs are magnified in those with depression and anxiety, and both disorders are associated with dramatic changes in sleep. Understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms of the development and long-term preservation of these memory trade-offs is thus essential for knowledge of both healthy and dysfunctional emotional processing. Moreover, a longstanding question in cognitive neuroscience is how memory for emotional experiences is consolidated over time, and examining sleep-dependent effects on memory trade-offs provides a rare window through which to view the consolidation processes at work. Examining sleep effects on memory trade-offs also provides a means to answer one of the most mystifying questions in the field in sleep and memory research, which is how sleep-dependent consolidation processes preferentially select some aspects of an experience for long-term storage while allowing other aspects of memory to be forgotten. In addition to contributing to cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology research, funding of this project enabling the growth of the neuroscience program at Boston College and helping launch a neuroscience focus at the University of Notre Dame. Moreover, this project is facilitating fruitful collaborations between Boston College, Beth Israel hospital, and Notre Dame, allowing students to benefit from training at all three sites. The project offers a rich research infrastructure for undergraduate student learning, providing them with exposure to EEG, fMRI, and behavioral assessment.