State Dependent Aspects of Cognition

描述(申请人提供)：在过去的10年里，我们对睡眠在学习和记忆巩固中可能扮演的角色的了解几乎是爆炸性的增长，但仍有几个主要问题。问题很大程度上是由于涉及的系统的复杂性；有多种形式的记忆，记忆巩固的多个步骤，以及可能有助于这些过程的多个阶段的睡眠。因此，有必要先问睡眠影响了哪些类型的记忆，然后再问涉及睡眠的哪些阶段和记忆巩固的哪些步骤。陈述性和程序性记忆系统都存在睡眠依赖的证据，在某些情况下，巩固过程的不同组成部分可能与睡眠相关。但相对较少的发现得到了多个小组的验证，其中一些只是首次在本申请的初步结果部分提出。我们建议解决这三个根本悬而未决的问题。我们将试图证明：(1)睡眠调节一项新的陈述性记忆任务的巩固(普通话研究)；(2)慢波睡眠稳定，快速眼动睡眠增强知觉学习；(3)睡眠作为睡眠依赖巩固过程的一部分，暂时破坏运动技能学习的稳定性。证实这些假设将极大地拓宽我们对睡眠在学习和记忆巩固中的作用的基本认识。西方社会已经成为一个睡眠不足的社会，在美国尤其如此。有一种流行的观点认为，睡眠不足的后果只是疲劳，这可以通过努力或药物来克服，周末睡个好觉可以完全逆转周中睡眠不足的任何有害影响。尽管医疗、公共安全和交通人员的睡眠不足也是出了名的，但在大学校园里，这种每周剥夺睡眠、然后周末狂欢睡眠的做法在任何地方都是最普遍的。所有这些群体都依赖于持续的教育和学习来有效地完成他们的任务，而清楚地了解睡眠不足究竟是如何导致记忆巩固失败的，应该会提供重要的论点，帮助对抗这种越来越少睡眠的文化趋势。此外，阐明“睡眠-记忆联系”将丰富我们对学习和记忆巩固的正常过程的理解，这些过程对学习和工作的有效性至关重要，并有助于解释睡眠不足和睡眠障碍是如何导致其他健康个体的认知障碍的。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The last 10 years have witnessed an almost explosive growth in our knowledge of the roles that sleep may play in learning and memory consolidation, but several major issues remain. Much of the problem is due to the complexity of the systems involved; there are multiple forms of memories, multiple steps in memory consolidation, and multiple stages of sleep which might contribute to these processes. It thus becomes necessary to first ask what kinds of memory are affected by sleep, and then to ask what stages of sleep and what steps of memory consolidation are involved. Evidence exists for both declarative and procedural memory systems being sleep dependent, and in some cases, distinct components of the consolidation process may be sleep-dependent. But relatively few findings have been validated by multiple groups, and several are only being presented for the first time in the Preliminary Results section of this application. We propose to address these three fundamental unresolved issues. We will attempt to show (1) that sleep mediates consolidation of a new declarative memory task (Mandarin language study), (2) that slow wave sleep stabilizes and REM sleeps enhance perceptual learning, and (3) that sleep temporarily destabilizes motor skill learning as part of a process of sleep dependent consolidation. Confirming these hypotheses will significantly broaden our basic knowledge of the role of sleep in learning and memory consolidation. Western society has become a sleep deprived society, and this is especially true in the United States. There is a popular belief that the consequence of sleep deprivation is simply tiredness, that this can be overcome with effort or drugs, and that a good night's sleep on the weekend can completely reverse any deleterious effects of mid-week deprivation. Nowhere is this practice of "sleep bulimia," of weekly deprivation followed by weekend binge sleeping, more prevalent than on college campuses, although medical, public safety, and transportation personnel are also notoriously sleep deprived. All of these groups depend on continued education and learning for the effective performance of their tasks, and a clear understanding of exactly how sleep loss contributes to a failure of memory consolidation should provide important arguments to help counter this cultural drift towards less and less sleep. In addition, elucidation of the "sleep-memory connection" will enrich our understanding of the normal processes of learning and memory consolidation so critical to effectiveness in school and work, and help explain how sleep loss and sleep disorders lead to cognitive impairments in otherwise healthy individuals.