Sleep Spindles and Their Significance for Declarative Memory Consolidation
Abstract
Study objectives Functional significance of stage 2 sleep spindle activity for declarative memory consolidation. Design Randomized, within-subject, multicenter. Setting Weekly sleep laboratory visits, actigraphy, and sleep diary (4 weeks). Participants Twenty-four healthy subjects (12 men) aged between 20 and 30 years. Interventions Declarative memory task or nonlearning control task before sleep. Measurement and results This study measured spindle activity during stage 2 sleep following a (declarative) word-pair association task as compared to a control task. Participants performed a cued recall in the evening after learning (160 word pairs) as well as in the subsequent morning after 8 hours of undisturbed sleep with full polysomnography. Overnight change in the number of recalled words, but not absolute memory performance, correlated significantly with increased spindle activity during the experimental night (r24 = .63, P Conclusion A growing body of evidence supports the active role of sleep for information reprocessing. Whereas past research focused mainly on the distinct rapid eye movement and slow-wave sleep, these results indicate that increased sleep stage 2 spindle activity is related to an increase in recall performance and, thus, may reflect memory consolidation.
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Indicators of sleep spindle expression consistently correlated with the amount of overnight retention of declarative memories.
“Furthermore, indicators of sleep spindle expression consistently correlated with the amount of overnight retention of declarative memories (86,213,214,235,446,562,822,1016,1024,1037,1044,1057).”
From About Sleep's Role in Memory (2013) · cites this paper as [1037]
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- Authors
- Schabus, M., Gruber, G., Parapatics, S., Sauter, C., Klösch, G., Anderer, P., Klimesch, W., Saletu, B., & Zeitlhofer, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Salzburg (AT)
- Medical University of Vienna (AT)
- Corresponding author
- Schabus, Manuel
- Venue
- Sleep
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2004-12
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1479-1485
- ISSN
- 0161-8105 (ISSN-L)
- 1550-9109
- OpenAlex
- W2151528679
- Cited by
- 560
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 37 · 2019: 40 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 40 · 2016: 40 · 2015: 31 · 2014: 36 · 2013: 38 · 2012: 31
- FWCI
- 4.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- SLEEP (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- European Commission
- Austrian Science Fund
- 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 spindles, stage 2 sleep, declarative memory consolidation, word pair association, cued recall, memory reprocessing, sleep-dependent memory, polysomnography
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Algorithms, Cues, Electrodes, Female, Humans, Male, Mastoid, Memory, Sleep, REM, Polysomnography, Intention
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