Walking through a Maze Alters the Architecture of Sleep
Abstract
Human and animal studies imply that sleep is a critical period for consolidation of recent memories. Whereas the majority of researchers focussed on the procedural learning, the present human study concerns how storing of spatial information and episodic memory are linked to sleep stages. Two city mazes, a simple and a complex one, were created by means of a computer program. Local aspects of these mazes appeared as street scenes on a TV-screen. Our subjects sat in front of the screen and manoeuvered through the maze by the help of a three-button PC mouse. Thus, each subject took a 'mental walk' through an imaginary city. The task was to find various end-points and to find the way back to the starting point. Subjects of two experimental groups 'walked' through either the simple or complex city maze for eight hours. Afterwards the subjects slept in our laboratory, where their sleep stages could be measured polygraphically. Subjects who had explored the simple maze showed considerable alteration in sleep architecture. They remained significantly longer in sleep Stage 2 than subjects who had explored the complex maze. Moreover, with successful orientation in the simple maze sleep stages occurred aperiodically, whereas walking through the complex maze was associated with sleep stages in accordance with ultradian cycles, as observed in a control group. Compared to subjects of the control group who had experienced neither maze, the subjects of both experimental groups had significa…
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Intense learning of declarative memories (word pairs or virtual maze) increases the number of spindles (12-15 Hz) during subsequent sleep, particularly in the early part of the night.
“Intense learning of declarative memories (word pairs or virtual maze) increases the number of spindles (12-15 Hz) during subsequent sleep, particularly in the early part of the night (432, 812).”
From About Sleep's Role in Memory (2013) · cites this paper as [812]
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- Authors
- Meier-Koll, A., Bussmann, B., Schmidt, C., & Neuschwander, D.
- Affiliations
- University of Konstanz (DE)
- ORCID
- Schmidt, Claudia
- Venue
- Perceptual and Motor Skills
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1999-06
- Volume
- 88
- Issue
- 3_suppl
- Pages
- 1141-1159
- ISSN
- 0031-5125 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-688X
- OpenAlex
- W2027620453
- Cited by
- 81
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 0.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Perceptual and Motor Skills (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- 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
- sleep architecture, spatial memory, episodic memory, maze navigation, stage 2 sleep, sleep spindles, ultradian rhythms, memory consolidation
- MeSH terms
- Activity Cycles, Adult, Animals, Computer Simulation, Electroencephalography, Female, Hippocampus, Humans, Locomotion, Male, Memory, Orientation, Sleep Stages, Space Perception, Polysomnography, Maze Learning, Mice, Rats
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