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Sleep benefits emotional and neutral associative memories equally

Schlaf begünstigt gleichermaßen emotionale sowie neutrale assoziative Erinnerungen

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Abstract

Background

Emotions modulate memory. It has been suggested that sleep contributes to improved memory of emotional events by preferentially consolidating emotional memories, presumably because of a selective off-line reactivation of information relevant to future behavior.

Objectives

We aimed to validate sleep-dependent memory consolidation in a new associative emotional memory paradigm suitable for inducing memory reactivations during sleep. We hypothesized that sleep preferentially might benefit the consolidation of emotional associations independently of their negative vs positive emotional valence.

Methods

Seventy-two healthy young participants performed an associative emotional memory task in either the evening or the morning. During the task, they were asked to associate neutrally spoken words to neutral, negative or positive pictures. Cued recall was tested after a 12-h retention interval filled with either night-time sleep or daytime wakefulness.

Results

Generally, emotional associations were better remembered than neutral ones. However, we were not able to replicate a selective benefit of sleep on emotional memory. Sleep robustly improved the cued recall performance of all picture types compared with wakefulness, without any modulating influence of emotional arousal or valence.

Conclusions

We conclude that the consolidation of explicitly learned associations benefits from sleep, independent of emotional arousal or valence. Selective emotional memory consolidation during sleep may be restricted to non-associative item memory or incidentally learned emotional associations.

Zusammenfassung

Hintergrund

Emotionen beeinflussen die Gedächtnisbildung. Es wird angenommen, dass die Gedächtniskonsolidierung im Schlaf zu diesem Effekt beiträgt und im Schlaf insbesondere emotionale Erinnerungen gefestigt werden. Dies geschieht möglicherweise über eine selektive Reaktivierung von zukunftsrelevanten Informationen.

Ziel der Arbeit

Das Ziel der Studie ist es, die schlafabhängige Gedächtniskonsolidierung eines neuen emotionalen Assoziationsparadigma zu validieren. Das Lernparadigma wäre zukünftig für die experimentelle Reaktivierung emotionaler Assoziationen im Schlaf geeignet. Die Hypothese lautet, dass sowohl negative als auch positive emotionale Assoziationen während des Schlafs bevorzugt gefestigt werden im Vergleich zu neutralen Assoziationen.

Material und Methoden

72 gesunde Versuchspersonen durchliefen entweder am Abend oder am Morgen eine assoziativ-emotionale Gedächtnisaufgabe. Dabei mussten neutrale gesprochene Wörter mit negativen, positiven oder neutralen Bildern assoziiert werden. Der Abruf wurde nach einer 12-stündigen Zeitspanne getestet, in der die Versuchspersonen entweder nachts schliefen oder tagsüber wach bleiben mussten.

Ergebnisse

Emotionale Assoziationen konnten allgemein besser erinnert werden als neutrale. Wir konnten jedoch nicht die selektive Verstärkung emotionaler Inhalte im Schlaf replizieren. Die Schlafgruppe zeigte insgesamt eine bessere Erinnerungsleistung als die Wachgruppe, unabhängig von der emotionalen Erregung und Valenz der gelernten Assoziationen.

Diskussion

Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass im Schlaf explizit gelernte Assoziationen unabhängig von Faktoren wie emotionaler Erregung oder Valenz gefestigt werden. Die präferentielle Konsolidierung von emotionalen Inhalten im Schlaf scheint möglicherweise nur auf nicht-assoziative Gedächtnisinhalte und inzidentell gelernte Assoziationen beschränkt zu sein.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Donata Schmid, Laura Jagoda, and Arndt Schaefer for their help in data collection.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinic of Affective Disorders and General Psychiatry, Psychiatric University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland

    Mick Lehmann & Erich Seifritz

  2. Institute of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Mick Lehmann & Erich Seifritz

  3. Zurich Center for Interdisciplinary Sleep Research (ZiS), Zurich, Switzerland

    Erich Seifritz & Björn Rasch

  4. Department of Psychology, Division of Cognitive Biopsychology and Methods, University of Fribourg, Rue P.-A.-Faucigny 2, 1701, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Björn Rasch

Authors
  1. Mick Lehmann
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  2. Erich Seifritz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Björn Rasch.

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Conflict of interest

M. Lehmann, E. Seifritz, and B. Rasch declare that they have no competing interests.

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

This work was supported by grants from the Swiss National Foundation (SNF) (PP00P1_133685 and 100014_162388) and the Clinical Research Priority Program “Sleep and Health” of the University of Zurich.

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Lehmann, M., Seifritz, E. & Rasch, B. Sleep benefits emotional and neutral associative memories equally. Somnologie 20, 47–53 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11818-015-0034-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11818-015-0034-4

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