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Dreaming and Offline Memory Consolidation

Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports volume 14, Article number: 433 (2014) Cite this article

Abstract

Converging evidence suggests that dreaming is influenced by the consolidation of memory during sleep. Following encoding, recently formed memory traces are gradually stabilized and reorganized into a more permanent form of long-term storage. Sleep provides an optimal neurophysiological state to facilitate this process, allowing memory networks to be repeatedly reactivated in the absence of new sensory input. The process of memory reactivation and consolidation in the sleeping brain appears to influence conscious experience during sleep, contributing to dream content recalled on awakening. This article outlines several lines of evidence in support of this hypothesis, and responds to some common objections.

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Notes

  1. As opposed to “symbolic”

  2. An example report from one participant: “[I’m] seeing in my mind how the game pieces kind of float down and fit into the other pieces, and am also rotating them.”

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Conflict of Interest

Erin J. Wamsley declares that the research described here was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grant R01-MH48832 (principal investigator Robert Stickgold), National Institutes of Health T32 training grant HL07901-10 to the Harvard Division of Sleep Medicine, and a KL2 Medical Research Investigator Training award (an appointed KL2 award) from Harvard Catalyst | The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center (National Center for Research Resources and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health award 8KL2TR000168-05). She is also a principal investigator supported by an R21 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (1R21MH098171-01A1) and has received grants from the BIAL Foundation. She has also received compensation for teaching a course at Harvard University.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not report original research findings. Some studies described here were performed in our laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where all human subjects signed informed consent prior to participation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Erin J. Wamsley

  2. Department of Psychology, Furman University, Johns Hall 206K, 3300 Poinsett Highway, Greenville, SC, 29613, USA

    Erin J. Wamsley

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  1. Erin J. Wamsley
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Correspondence to Erin J. Wamsley.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Sleep

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Wamsley, E.J. Dreaming and Offline Memory Consolidation. Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep 14, 433 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11910-013-0433-5

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Keywords

  • Sleep
  • Dreaming
  • Rapid eye movement
  • Non-rapid eye movement
  • Memory consolidation
  • Offline processing
  • Memory reactivation
  • Replay
  • Consciousness