http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033079 "Memory for Semantically Related and Unrelated Declarative Information: The Benefit of Sleep, the Cost of Wake"
> Numerous studies have examined sleep's influence on a range of > hippocampus-dependent declarative memory tasks, from text learning to spatial > navigation. In this study, we examined the impact of sleep, wake, and > time-of-day influences on the processing of declarative information with > strong semantic links (semantically related word pairs) and information > requiring the formation of novel associations (unrelated word pairs). > Participants encoded a set of related or unrelated word pairs at either 9am > or 9pm, and were then tested after an interval of 30 min, 12 hr, or 24 hr. > The time of day at which subjects were trained had no effect on training > performance or initial memory of either word pair type. At 12 hr retest, > memory overall was superior following a night of sleep compared to a day of > wakefulness. However, this performance difference was a result of a > pronounced deterioration in memory for unrelated word pairs across wake; > there was no sleep-wake difference for related word pairs. At 24 hr retest, > with all subjects having received both a full night of sleep and a full day > of wakefulness, we found that memory was superior when sleep occurred shortly > after learning rather than following a full day of wakefulness. Lastly, we > present evidence that the rate of deterioration across wakefulness was > significantly diminished when a night of sleep preceded the wake period > compared to when no sleep preceded wake, suggesting that sleep served to > stabilize the memories against the deleterious effects of subsequent > wakefulness. Overall, our results demonstrate that 1) the impact of 12 hr of > waking interference on memory retention is strongly determined by word-pair > type, 2) sleep is most beneficial to memory 24 hr later if it occurs shortly > after learning, and 3) sleep does in fact stabilize declarative memories, > diminishing the negative impact of subsequent wakefulness. -- gwern http://www.gwern.net -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mnemosyne-proj-users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mnemosyne-proj-users?hl=en.
