Experimental manipulation of sleep mentation and memory

描述（由申请人提供）：虽然清醒认知有助于促进生物体与外部（物理和社会）环境的持续相互作用，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期间参与和改变的神经认知功能，以及(2)巩固，修改和整合在先前清醒经验中编码的信息。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起着重要作用。清醒时的神经认知功能通常发生在有意识的意识中，有意识的经验可以为潜在的大脑过程提供证据。在睡眠中，我们假设在睡眠中（例如，在梦中）达到有意识的意识是对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可以帮助我们理解这些睡眠依赖的神经生物学过程，并帮助我们进一步定义睡眠在神经认知和有机体适应中的作用。最近的研究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，我们发现视频游戏《俄罗斯方块》和《高山赛车》的图像被纳入了多达42%的随后的睡眠发作心理报告中，多达89%的受试者报告了这些图像。在睡眠开始时，视觉和动觉的感觉都会被重现，但情景记忆的细节特征，比如电脑、键盘、桌子或玩俄罗斯方块的房间，都不存在。俄罗斯方块图像也出现在双侧内侧颞叶和海马损伤的致密性失忆症患者中，表明陈述性、情景性记忆并不需要这些睡眠时图像的形成。此外，对《高山赛车》的初步研究表明，当实验对象在晚些时候入睡时被唤醒，游戏意象消失，取而代之的是更弱相关的意象，比如从长满草的山上摔下来。这里提出的研究使用睡眠状态报告来支持这样一种假设，即在夜间和多个睡眠阶段，清醒的记忆通过一系列不同的步骤被重新加工，以帮助它们巩固和整合。

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.