CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 89Sleep and Wakefulness ResearchMemory and Neural MechanismsSleep and related disorders

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 10 of the 10 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The effect of zolpidem on memory consolidation over a night of sleep

Open access
Zhang, Jing, Yetton, Ben, Whitehurst, Lauren N, Naji, Mohsen, Mednick, Sara C·2020·Sleep
DOI 10.1093/sleep/zsaa084PMC PMC8064806
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Study Objectives: Nonrapid eye movement sleep boosts hippocampus-dependent, long-term memory formation more so than wake. Studies have pointed to several electrophysiological events that likely play a role in this process, including thalamocortical sleep spindles (12–15 Hz). However, interventional studies that directly probe the causal role of spindles in consolidation are scarce. Previous studies have used zolpidem, a GABA-A agonist, to increase sleep spindles during a daytime nap and promote hippocampal-dependent episodic memory. The current study investigated the effect of zolpidem on nighttime sleep and overnight improvement of episodic memories. Methods: We used a double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subject design to test the a priori hypothesis that zolpidem would lead to increased memory performance on a word-paired associates task by boosting spindle activity. We also explored the impact of zolpidem across a range of other spectral sleep features, including slow oscillations (0–1 Hz), delta (1–4 Hz), theta (4–8 Hz), sigma (12–15 Hz), as well as spindle–SO coupling. Results: We showed greater memory improvement after a night of sleep with zolpidem, compared to placebo, replicating a prior nap study. Additionally, zolpidem increased sigma power, decreased theta and delta power, and altered the phase angle of spindle–SO coupling, compared to placebo. Spindle density, theta power, and spindle–SO coupling were associated with next-day memory performance. Conclusions: These results are consistent with the hypothesis that sleep, specifically the timing and amount of sleep spindles, plays a causal role in the long-term formation of episodic memories. Furthermore, our results emphasize the role of nonrapid eye movement theta activity in human memory consolidation.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1093/sleep/zsaa084

Cites

10 of 10 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Other studies reported divergent observations with regard to the effects of zolpidem on EEG sigma power, micro-arousals and consolidation of memory.

    “Other studies reported divergent observations with regard to the effects of zolpidem on EEG sigma power, micro-arousals and consolidation of memory67,68,95,96.”

    From Norepinephrine-mediated slow vasomotion drives glymphatic clearance during sleep (2025) · cites this paper as [96]

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 68

  1. Diekelmann, 2014, Sleep for cognitive enhancement, Front Syst Neurosci., 8, 46, 10.3389/fnsys.2014.00046 · DOI
  2. Mednick, 2011, An opportunistic theory of cellular and systems consolidation, Trends Neurosci., 34, 504, 10.1016/j.tins.2011.06.003 · DOI · Paper page
  3. Fowler, 1973, Sleep and memory, Science., 179, 302, 10.1126/science.179.4070.302 · DOI · Paper page
  4. Diekelmann, 2010, The memory function of sleep, Nat Rev Neurosci., 11, 114, 10.1038/nrn2762 · DOI · Paper page
  5. Binder, 2013, Transcranial slow oscillation stimulation during NREM sleep enhances acquisition of the radial maze task and modulates cortical network activity in rats, Front Behav Neurosci., 7, 220
  6. Ngo, 2013, Auditory closed-loop stimulation of the sleep slow oscillation enhances memory, Neuron., 78, 545, 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.03.006 · DOI · Paper page
  7. Lustenberger, 2012, Triangular relationship between sleep spindle activity, general cognitive ability and the efficiency of declarative learning, PLoS One., 7, e49561, 10.1371/journal.pone.0049561 · DOI
  8. Schabus, 2004, Sleep spindles and their significance for declarative memory consolidation, Sleep., 27, 1479, 10.1093/sleep/27.7.1479 · DOI · Paper page
  9. Clemens, 2005, Overnight verbal memory retention correlates with the number of sleep spindles, Neuroscience., 132, 529, 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2005.01.011 · DOI · Paper page
  10. Gais, 2002, Learning-dependent increases in sleep spindle density, J Neurosci., 22, 6830, 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.22-15-06830.2002 · DOI · Paper page
  11. Antony, 2018, Sleep spindle refractoriness segregates periods of memory reactivation, Curr Biol., 28, 1736, 10.1016/j.cub.2018.04.020 · DOI · Paper page
  12. Cairney, 2018, Memory consolidation is linked to spindle-mediated information processing during sleep, Curr Biol., 28, 948, 10.1016/j.cub.2018.01.087 · DOI · Paper page
  13. Lustenberger, 2016, Feedback-controlled transcranial alternating current stimulation reveals a functional role of sleep spindles in motor memory consolidation, Curr Biol., 26, 2127, 10.1016/j.cub.2016.06.044 · DOI
  14. Mölle, 2011, Fast and slow spindles during the sleep slow oscillation: disparate coalescence and engagement in memory processing, Sleep., 34, 1411, 10.5665/SLEEP.1290 · DOI · Paper page
  15. Staresina, 2015, Hierarchical nesting of slow oscillations, spindles and ripples in the human hippocampus during sleep, Nat Neurosci., 18, 1679, 10.1038/nn.4119 · DOI · Paper page
  16. Gais, 2004, Declarative memory consolidation: mechanisms acting during human sleep, Learn Mem., 11, 679, 10.1101/lm.80504 · DOI · Paper page
  17. Niknazar, 2015, Coupling of thalamocortical sleep oscillations are important for memory consolidation in humans, PLoS One., 10, e0144720, 10.1371/journal.pone.0144720 · DOI
  18. Sattari, 2019, Does working memory improvement benefit from sleep in older adults?, Neurobiol Sleep Circadian Rhythms., 6, 53, 10.1016/j.nbscr.2019.01.001 · DOI
  19. Latchoumane, 2017, Thalamic spindles promote memory formation during sleep through triple phase-locking of cortical, thalamic, and hippocampal rhythms, Neuron, 95, 424, 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.06.025 · DOI · Paper page
  20. Helfrich, 2018, Old brains come uncoupled in sleep: slow wave-spindle synchrony, brain atrophy, and forgetting, Neuron., 97, 221, 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.11.020 · DOI · Paper page
  21. Demanuele, 2017, Coordination of slow waves with sleep spindles predicts sleep-dependent memory consolidation in schizophrenia, Sleep, 40, 10.1093/sleep/zsw013 · DOI
  22. Drover, 2004, Comparative pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of short-acting hypnosedatives: zaleplon, zolpidem and zopiclone, Clin Pharmacokinet., 43, 227, 10.2165/00003088-200443040-00002 · DOI
  23. Mednick, 2013, The critical role of sleep spindles in hippocampal-dependent memory: a pharmacology study, J Neurosci., 33, 4494, 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3127-12.2013 · DOI
  24. Wamsley, 2013, The effects of eszopiclone on sleep spindles and memory consolidation in schizophrenia: a randomized placebo-controlled trial, Sleep., 36, 1369, 10.5665/sleep.2968 · DOI
  25. Dijk, 2010, Sex differences and the effect of gaboxadol and zolpidem on EEG power spectra in NREM and REM sleep, J Psychopharmacol., 24, 1613, 10.1177/0269881109105788 · DOI
  26. Lundahl, 2012, EEG spectral power density profiles during NREM sleep for gaboxadol and zolpidem in patients with primary insomnia, J Psychopharmacol., 26, 1081, 10.1177/0269881111424457 · DOI
  27. Landolt, 2000, Zolpidem and sleep deprivation: different effect on EEG power spectra, J Sleep Res., 9, 175, 10.1046/j.1365-2869.2000.00192.x · DOI
  28. Whitehurst, 2019, The impact of psychostimulants on sustained attention over a 24-h period, Cognition., 193, 104015, 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104015 · DOI
  29. Choi, 2019, Corrigendum: Effects of different re-referencing methods on spontaneously generated Ear-EEG, Front Neurosci., 13, 908, 10.3389/fnins.2019.00908 · DOI
  30. Rechtschaffen, A Manual of Standardized Terminology, Techniques, and Scoring System for the Sleep Stages of Human Subjects
  31. Malerba, 2018, Spatio-temporal structure of sleep slow oscillations on the electrode manifold and its relation to spindles, Sleep, 42, 10.1093/sleep/zsy197 · DOI
  32. Mylonas, 2019, Naps reliably estimate nocturnal sleep spindle density in health and schizophrenia, J Sleep Res, 00, e12968
  33. Naji, 2019, Coupling of autonomic and central events during sleep benefits declarative memory consolidation, Neurobiol Learn Mem., 157, 139, 10.1016/j.nlm.2018.12.008 · DOI
  34. Schapiro, 2017, Sleep benefits memory for semantic category structure while preserving exemplar-specific information, Sci Rep., 7, 14869, 10.1038/s41598-017-12884-5 · DOI
  35. Wamsley, 2012, Reduced sleep spindles and spindle coherence in schizophrenia: mechanisms of impaired memory consolidation?, Biol Psychiatry., 71, 154, 10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.08.008 · DOI · Paper page
  36. Lacourse, 2019, A sleep spindle detection algorithm that emulates human expert spindle scoring, J Neurosci Methods., 316, 3, 10.1016/j.jneumeth.2018.08.014 · DOI
  37. Tsanas, 2015, Stage-independent, single lead EEG sleep spindle detection using the continuous wavelet transform and local weighted smoothing, Front Hum Neurosci., 9, 181, 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00181 · DOI
  38. Warby, 2014, Sleep-spindle detection: crowdsourcing and evaluating performance of experts, non-experts and automated methods, Nat Methods., 11, 385, 10.1038/nmeth.2855 · DOI
  39. Dang-Vu, 2008, Spontaneous neural activity during human slow wave sleep, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A., 105, 15160, 10.1073/pnas.0801819105 · DOI · Paper page
  40. Canolty, 2006, High gamma power is phase-locked to theta oscillations in human neocortex, Science., 313, 1626, 10.1126/science.1128115 · DOI · Paper page
  41. Benjamini, 1995, Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing, J R Stat Soc Ser B, 57, 289, 10.1111/j.2517-6161.1995.tb02031.x · DOI · Paper page
  42. Meléndez, 2005, Zolpidem and triazolam do not affect the nocturnal sleep-induced memory improvement, Psychopharmacology (Berl)., 181, 21, 10.1007/s00213-005-2228-0 · DOI · Paper page
  43. Hall-Porter, 2014, The effect of two benzodiazepine receptor agonist hypnotics on sleep-dependent memory consolidation, J Clin Sleep Med., 10, 27, 10.5664/jcsm.3352 · DOI
  44. Davachi, 2002, Hippocampal contributions to episodic encoding: insights from relational and item-based learning, J Neurophysiol., 88, 982, 10.1152/jn.2002.88.2.982 · DOI
  45. Lacourse, Massive Online Data Annotation (MODA): crowdsourcing to generate high-quality sleep spindle annotations from EEG data (under review)
  46. Clemens, 2011, Fine-tuned coupling between human parahippocampal ripples and sleep spindles, Eur J Neurosci., 33, 511, 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2010.07505.x · DOI · Paper page
  47. Rasch, 2008, Reactivation and consolidation of memory during sleep, Curr Dir Psychol Sci, 17, 188, 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00572.x · DOI
  48. Paller, 2004, Memory reactivation and consolidation during sleep, Learn Mem., 11, 664, 10.1101/lm.75704 · DOI
  49. Rosanova, 2005, Pattern-specific associative long-term potentiation induced by a sleep spindle-related spike train, J Neurosci., 25, 9398, 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2149-05.2005 · DOI · Paper page
  50. Ulrich, 2016, Sleep spindles as facilitators of memory formation and learning, Neural Plast., 2016, 1796715, 10.1155/2016/1796715 · DOI · Paper page
  51. Kopp, 2004, Sleep EEG changes after zolpidem in mice, Neuroreport., 15, 2299, 10.1097/00001756-200410050-00031 · DOI · Paper page
  52. Sherin, 1998, Innervation of histaminergic tuberomammillary neurons by GABAergic and galaninergic neurons in the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus of the rat, J Neurosci., 18, 4705, 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.18-12-04705.1998 · DOI
  53. Uygun, 2016, Bottom-up versus top-down induction of sleep by zolpidem acting on histaminergic and neocortex neurons, J Neurosci., 36, 11171, 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3714-15.2016 · DOI · Paper page
  54. Klimesch, 1994, Episodic and semantic memory: an analysis in the EEG theta and alpha band, Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol., 91, 428, 10.1016/0013-4694(94)90164-3 · DOI · Paper page
  55. Nyhus, 2010, Functional role of gamma and theta oscillations in episodic memory, Neurosci Biobehav Rev., 34, 1023, 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2009.12.014 · DOI · Paper page
  56. Schreiner, 2018, Theta phase-coordinated memory reactivation reoccurs in a slow-oscillatory rhythm during NREM sleep, Cell Rep., 25, 296, 10.1016/j.celrep.2018.09.037 · DOI
  57. Buzsáki, 2002, Theta oscillations in the hippocampus, Neuron., 33, 325, 10.1016/S0896-6273(02)00586-X · DOI · Paper page
  58. Fox, 1986, Hippocampal theta rhythm and the firing of neurons in walking and urethane anesthetized rats, Exp Brain Res., 62, 495, 10.1007/BF00236028 · DOI
  59. Klimesch, 1999, EEG alpha and theta oscillations reflect cognitive and memory performance: a review and analysis, Brain Res Brain Res Rev., 29, 169, 10.1016/S0165-0173(98)00056-3 · DOI · Paper page
  60. Poe, 2000, Experience-dependent phase-reversal of hippocampal neuron firing during REM sleep, Brain Res., 855, 176, 10.1016/S0006-8993(99)02310-0 · DOI · Paper page
  61. Poe, 2017, Sleep is for forgetting, J Neurosci., 37, 464, 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0820-16.2017 · DOI
  62. Hutchison, 2015, The role of REM sleep theta activity in emotional memory, Front Psychol., 6, 1439, 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01439 · DOI · Paper page
  63. Nishida, 2009, REM sleep, prefrontal theta, and the consolidation of human emotional memory, Cereb Cortex., 19, 1158, 10.1093/cercor/bhn155 · DOI · Paper page
  64. Schreiner, 2017, The beneficial role of memory reactivation for language learning during sleep: a review, Brain Lang., 167, 94, 10.1016/j.bandl.2016.02.005 · DOI
  65. Schreiner, 2015, Auditory feedback blocks memory benefits of cueing during sleep, Nat Commun., 6, 8729, 10.1038/ncomms9729 · DOI
  66. Kim, 2019, Competing roles of slow oscillations and delta waves in memory consolidation versus forgetting, Cell., 179, 514, 10.1016/j.cell.2019.08.040 · DOI · Paper page
  67. Karakaş, 2007, Oscillatory responses representing differential auditory processing in sleep, Int J Psychophysiol, 65, 40, 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2007.02.010 · DOI
  68. Fuentemilla, 2014, Theta oscillations orchestrate medial temporal lobe and neocortex in remembering autobiographical memories, NeuroImage, 85, 730, 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.08.029 · DOI · Paper page

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Metadata

Authors
Zhang, J., Yetton, B., Whitehurst, L. N., Naji, M., & Mednick, S. C.
Affiliations
  • University of California, Irvine (US)
  • Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine
  • University of California, San Francisco (US)
  • University of California San Diego (US)
Corresponding author
Mednick, Sara C
ORCID
Venue
Sleep
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2020-04-24
Volume
43
Issue
11
ISSN
  • 0161-8105 (ISSN-L)
  • 1550-9109
DOI
10.1093/sleep/zsaa084
PMC
PMC8064806
OpenAlex
W3020189638
Cited by
89
References
10
Citations by year
2026: 15 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 6
FWCI
5.61
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model (vor)
Locations
  • SLEEP (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Office of Naval Research (N00014-14-1-0513)
  • National Institutes of Health (R01 AG046646)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Sleep and Wakefulness Research
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and related disorders
Keywords
zolpidem, memory consolidation, sleep spindles, NREM sleep, episodic memory, hippocampus, slow oscillations, theta power, delta power, sigma power, GABA-A receptor agonists, nocturnal sleep
MeSH terms
Memory Consolidation, Zolpidem, Electroencephalography, Humans, Sleep, Polysomnography

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review