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Sleep-dependent memory triage: evolving generalization through selective processing
Open accessAbstract
The brain does not retain all the information it encodes in a day. Much is forgotten, and of those memories retained, their subsequent evolution can follow any of a number of pathways. Emerging data makes clear that sleep is a compelling candidate for performing many of these operations. But how does the sleeping brain know which information to preserve and which to forget? What should sleep do with that information it chooses to keep? For information that is retained, sleep can integrate it into existing memory networks, look for common patterns and distill overarching rules, or simply stabilize and strengthen the memory exactly as it was learned. We suggest such 'memory triage' lies at the heart of a sleep-dependent memory processing system that selects new information, in a discriminatory manner, and assimilates it into the brain's vast armamentarium of evolving knowledge, helping guide each organism through its own, unique life.
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“Across diverse forms memory, sleep following encoding results in improved memory performance after a delay [13, 14].”
From Constructive episodic simulation in dreams (2022) · cites this paper as [14]
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“Sleep has been shown to modulate the processing of emotional memory.[66][67][68]”
From Cognitive Performance, Sleepiness, and Mood in Partially Sleep Deprived Adolescents: The Need for Sleep Study (2016) · cites this paper as [66]
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“On the other hand, sleep enables the extraction of regularities across instances, the loss of contextual information and the retention of gist, as seen in representations in extra-hippocampal regions 89,97 .”
From From cognitive maps to spatial schemas (2023) · cites this paper as [97]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Stickgold, R., & Walker, M. P.
- Affiliations
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Corresponding author
- Stickgold, Robert
- Walker, Matthew P
- Venue
- Nature Neuroscience
- Published
- 2013-01-28
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 139-145
- ISSN
- 1097-6256 (ISSN-L)
- 1546-1726
- PMC
- PMC5826623
- OpenAlex
- W2036537336
- Cited by
- 755
- References
- 77
- Citations by year
- 2026: 29 · 2025: 44 · 2024: 45 · 2023: 113 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 50 · 2020: 58 · 2019: 71 · 2018: 58 · 2017: 60 · 2016: 40 · 2015: 62 · 2014: 58 · 2013: 26
- FWCI
- 5.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute on Aging (R01AG031164, AG031164)
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH-48832, R01MH093537, MH093537, R01MH048832, MH92638, R01MH092638)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA031939, R21DA031939)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Sleep and Wakefulness Research
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Keywords
- sleep-dependent memory consolidation, forgetting, memory generalization, memory integration, memory stabilization, feature binding, evolution of memory
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Discrimination, Psychological, Humans, Learning, Memory, Psychological Theory, Sleep
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