Sleep reactivation did not boost suppression-induced forgetting
Open accessAbstract
Sleep's role in memory consolidation is widely acknowledged, but its role in weakening memories is still debated. Memory weakening is evolutionary beneficial and makes an integral contribution to cognition. We sought evidence on whether sleep-based memory reactivation can facilitate memory suppression. Participants learned pairs of associable words (e.g., DIET-CREAM) and were then exposed to hint words (e.g., DIET) and instructed to either recall ("think") or suppress ("no-think") the corresponding target words (e.g., CREAM). As expected, suppression impaired retention when tested immediately after a 90-min nap. To test if reactivation could selectively enhance memory suppression during sleep, we unobtrusively presented one of two sounds conveying suppression instructions during sleep, followed by hint words. Results showed that targeted memory reactivation did not enhance suppression-induced forgetting. Although not predicted, post-hoc analyses revealed that sleep cues strengthened memory, but only for suppressed pairs that were weakly encoded before sleep. The results leave open the question of whether memory suppression can be augmented during sleep, but suggest strategies for future studies manipulating memory suppression during sleep. Additionally, our findings support the notion that sleep reactivation is particularly beneficial for weakly encoded information, which may be prioritized for consolidation.
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“Relatedly, efforts to enhance overnight consolidation via memory cueing in sleep are most effective when pre-sleep learning performance is low [21–23].”
From Sleep bolsters schematically incongruent memories (2022) · cites this paper as [23]
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- Authors
- Schechtman, E., Lampe, A., Wilson, B. J., Kwon, E., Anderson, M. C., & Paller, K. A.
- Affiliations
- Northwestern University (US)
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Schechtman, Eitan
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2021-01-14
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1383-1383
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7809483
- OpenAlex
- W3120582190
- Cited by
- 25
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 2
- FWCI
- 2.76
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Apollo (cc-by)
- Funders
- Human Frontier Science Program
- Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program
- Medical Research Council (MC-A060-5PR00)
- National Science Foundation (BCS-1829414)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Sleep and Wakefulness Research
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Keywords
- targeted memory reactivation, memory suppression, forgetting, sleep, memory consolidation, associative learning
- MeSH terms
- Memory Consolidation, Adolescent, Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Mental Recall, Sleep
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