Experimental manipulation of sleep mentation and memory

描述(申请人提供)：虽然清醒的认知有助于促进有机体与外部(物理和社会)环境的持续互动，但睡眠具有两个潜在的关键支持功能：(1)恢复和正常化在先前清醒时参与和改变的神经认知功能，(2)巩固、修改和整合先前清醒经历中编码的信息。现在有相当多的证据表明，睡眠在巩固记忆和应对情绪压力方面都发挥着重要作用。清醒时的神经认知功能通常发生在有意识的范围内，而有意识的体验可以为潜在的大脑过程提供证据。带到睡眠中，我们假设在睡眠中(例如，在梦中)到达有意识的东西是潜在的大脑功能过程的反映。因此，对睡眠状态的研究和操作有助于我们理解这些睡眠依赖的神经生物学过程，并帮助我们进一步确定睡眠在神经认知和组织适应中的作用。最近的进展使实验操作和客观量化睡眠状态的内容成为可能。使用这些新开发的技术，我们已经表明，视频游戏俄罗斯方块和高山赛车的图像被合并到随后的睡眠开始状态报告中的高达42%，多达89%的受试者报告了这样的图像。视觉和运动感觉都是在睡眠开始时被复制的，但缺乏情节记忆特有的细节，比如玩俄罗斯方块的电脑、键盘、桌子或房间。有双侧内侧颞叶和海马区损害的密集健忘症患者也报告了俄罗斯方块的图像，这表明形成这些睡眠开始图像不需要陈述性的情节记忆。此外，阿尔卑斯山赛车手的飞行员研究表明，当受试者在深夜开始睡眠时被唤醒，游戏图像就会消失，取而代之的是更弱的关联图像，比如从长满草的小山上掉下来的图像。这里提出的研究使用睡眠状态的报告来支持这样的假设，即在夜间和跨多个睡眠阶段，清醒的记忆通过一系列不同的步骤重新处理，这些步骤有助于它们的巩固和整合。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): While waking cognition serves to facilitate an organism's ongoing interactions with the external (physical and social) environment, sleep serves two potentially critical support functions: (1) the restoration and normalization of neurocognitive functions that were engaged and altered during prior waking, and (2) the consolidation, modification, and integration of information encoded during prior waking experiences. There is now considerable evidence that sleep plays important roles in both memory consolidation and coping with emotional stress. Neurocognitive function during waking normally occurs within conscious awareness, and conscious experience can provide evidence of underlying brain processes. Carried over into sleep, we hypothesize that what reaches conscious awareness during sleep (e.g., in dreams) is a reflection of underlying functional brain processes. The study and manipulation of sleep mentation can thus contribute to our understanding of these sleep-dependent neurobiological processes and help us further define the role of sleep in neurocognition and organismic adaptation. Recent advances make it possible to experimentally manipulate and objectively quantify the content of sleep mentation. Using these newly developed techniques, we have shown that images of the video games Tetris and Alpine Racer are incorporated into up to 42% of subsequent sleep onset mentation reports, with as many as 89% of subjects reporting such images. Both visual and kinesthetic sensations are reproduced at sleep onset, but details characteristic of episodic memories, such as the computer, keyboard, desk or room in which Tetris was played, are absent. Tetris imagery was also reported by dense amnesiacs with bilateral medial temporal lobe and hippocampal damage, demonstrating declarative, episodic memories are not required for formation of these sleep onset images. In addition, pilot studies with Alpine Racer have shown that when subjects are awakened at sleep onset later in the night, game imagery disappears and is replaced by more weakly related imagery, such as of falling down a grass covered hill. The studies proposed here use reports of sleep mentation to provide support for the hypothesis that, during the night and across multiple sleep stages, waking memories are reprocessed through a series of distinct steps that aid in their consolidation and integration.