Overnight sleep benefits both neutral and negative direct associative and relational memory
Open accessAbstract
Strong evidence suggests that sleep plays a role in memory consolidation, which involves both stabilizing memory into long-term storage as well as integrating new information into existing stores. The current study investigated consolidation, across a day of wakefulness or night of sleep, of emotional and neutral directly learned visual paired associates (A-B/B-C pairs) as well as formation of memory for relational pairs formed via overlapping learned components (A-C pairs). Participants learned 40 negative and 40 neutral face-object pairs followed by a baseline test in session 1 either in the morning or evening. They then spent a 12-hour retention period during which participants either went about their normal day or spent the night in the sleep lab. During session 2, participants completed a surprise test to assess their memory for relational pairs (A-C) as well as memory for direct associates (A-B/B-C). As hypothesized, the results demonstrated that a 12-hour retention period predominantly spent asleep, compared to awake, benefited memory for both relational and direct associative memory. However, contrary to the hypothesis that emotional salience would promote preferential consolidation, sleep appeared to benefit both negative and neutral information similarly for direct associative and relational memories, suggesting that sleep may interact with other factors affecting encoding (e.g., depth of encoding) to benefit direct and relational associative memory. As one of the few studies examining the role of nocturnal sleep and emotion on both direct and relational associative memory, our findings suggest key insights into how overnight sleep consolidates these different forms of memory.
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Other studies revealed comparable benefits from sleep for neutral over emotional stimuli.
“other studies revealed comparable benefits from sleep for neutral over emotional stimuli.”
From Sleep—A brain-state serving systems memory consolidation (2023) · cites this paper as [26]
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- Authors
- Huguet, M., Payne, J. D., Kim, S. Y., & Alger, S. E.
- Affiliations
- University of Notre Dame (US)
- Corresponding author
- Alger, Sara E.
- Venue
- Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience
- Published
- 2019-08-29
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1391-1403
- ISSN
- 1530-7026 (ISSN-L)
- 1531-135X
- OpenAlex
- W2970793683
- Cited by
- 17
- References
- 67
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 1.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Defense
- 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
- sleep, memory consolidation, emotional memory, relational memory, paired associates, emotional salience, nocturnal sleep, retention interval
- MeSH terms
- Memory Consolidation, Adolescent, Adult, Association Learning, Emotions, Female, Humans, Male, Photic Stimulation, Sleep, Wakefulness, Young Adult, Healthy Volunteers
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