In:
Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Vol. 23, No. 5 ( 2023-10), p. 1445-1459
Abstract:
Sleep is especially important for emotional memories, although the mechanisms for prioritizing emotional content are insufficiently known. As during waking, emotional processing during sleep may be hemispherically asymmetric; right-lateralized rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep theta (~4–7 Hz) is reportedly associated with emotional memory retention. No research exists on lateralized non-REM sleep oscillations. However, sleep spindles, especially when coupled with slow oscillations (SOs), facilitate off-line memory consolidation. Our primary goal was to examine how the lateralization (right-to-left contrast) of REM theta, sleep spindles, and SO-spindle coupling is associated with overnight recognition memory in a task consisting of neutral and emotionally aversive pictures. Thirty-two healthy adults encoded 150 target pictures before overnight sleep. The recognition of target pictures among foils (discriminability, d’ ) was tested immediately, 12 hours, and 24 hours after encoding. Recognition discriminability between targets and foils was similar for neutral and emotional pictures in immediate and 12-h retrievals. After 24 hours, emotional pictures were less accurately discriminated ( p 〈 0.001). Emotional difference at 24-h retrieval was associated with right-to-left contrast in frontal fast spindle density ( p 〈 0.001). The lateralization of SO-spindle coupling was associated with higher neutral versus emotional difference across all retrievals ( p = 0.004). Our findings contribute to a largely unstudied area in sleep-related memory research. Hemispheric asymmetry in non-REM sleep oscillations may contribute to how neutral versus emotional information is processed. This is presumably underlain by both mechanistic offline memory consolidation and a trait-like cognitive/affective bias that influences memory encoding and retrieval. Methodological choices and participants’ affective traits are likely involved.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
1530-7026
,
1531-135X
DOI:
10.3758/s13415-023-01113-4
Language:
English
Publisher:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publication Date:
2023
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2053090-0
SSG:
5,2
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