Reactivation and abstraction of self-related social information during sleep

从复杂和高度动态的社会互动中学习社会信息是人类的核心能力。为了驾驭社会环境，人类需要从他人的行为中提取信息，并根据收到的反馈调整自己的行动。因此，从复杂的社会过程中提取自我相关信息的要点在调节社会行为中具有重要作用。本研究的主要目的是研究睡眠时大脑再激活在从自我相关的社会信息中提取要点中的功能作用。我们假设睡眠中自我相关信息的再激活是自我相关信念抽象的核心机制。我们进一步假设，在学习过程中，消极信息被编码到更强的程度，而在睡眠过程中，更积极的，因此是有益的，信息被重新激活，从而被抽象。因此，睡眠自适应地抵消了消极的动态。我们将在健康人身上验证这些假设：(1)通过fMRI解码睡眠期间与学习相关的神经模式的自发再激活；(2)通过TMR（目标记忆再激活）在睡眠期间外部操纵再激活。最后，我们将探讨这些过程在亚临床人群中是否以及如何与发展精神障碍的高风险人群（例如，低自尊得分）不同。该项目的研究结果将加深我们对从社会互动中提取自我相关信息的睡眠机制的理解，并将为表现出社会信息处理不适应的个体的睡眠干预开辟新的途径。

The learning of social information from complex and highly dynamic social interactions is a central human capacity. To navigate the social environment, humans need to abstract information from others’ behaviors and adapt their own actions based on incoming feedback. Extracting the gist of self-related information from complex social processes thereby has an essential function in the regulation of social behavior. The overarching goal of this proposal is to study the functional role of reactivation during sleep for the abstraction of gist from self-related social information. We hypothesize that the reactivation of self-related information during sleep is a central mechanism for the abstraction of self-related beliefs. We further hypothesize that during learning negative information is encoded to a stronger degree, whereas during sleep more positive, and thus self-beneficial, information is reactivated and consequently abstracted. Thereby, sleep adaptively counteracts an otherwise negative dynamic. We will test these hypotheses in healthy humans (1) by decoding spontaneous reactivation of learning-related neural patterns during sleep with fMRI and (2) by externally manipulating reactivations during sleep with targeted memory reactivation (TMR). Finally, we will explore whether and how these processes differ in sub-clinical populations with a high risk for developing mental disorders (e.g., low scores in self-esteem). The findings of this project will deepen our understanding of sleep-based mechanisms in the abstraction of self-related information from social interactions and will open new avenues for sleep-based interventions in individuals showing maladaptive social information processing.