Sleep for cognitive enhancement
By Susanne Diekelmann. 2014
178 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Sleep is essential for effective cognitive functioning. Loosing even a few hours of sleep can have detrimental effects on a wide variety of cognitive processes such as attention, language, reasoning, decision making, learning and memory. While sleep is necessary to ensure normal healthy cognitive functioning, it can also enhance performance beyond the boundaries of the normal condition. This article discusses the enhancing potential of sleep, mainly focusing on the domain of learning and memory. Sleep is known to facilitate the consolidation of memories learned before sleep as well as the acquisition of new memories to be learned after sleep. According to a widely held model this beneficial effect of sleep relies on the neuronal reactivation of memories during sleep that is associated with sleep-specific brain oscillations (slow oscillations, spindles, ripples) as well as a characteristic neurotransmitter milieu. Recent research indicates that memory processing during sleep can be boosted by (i) cueing memory reactivation during sleep; (ii) stimulating sleep-specific brain oscillations; and (iii) targeting specific neurotransmitter systems pharmacologically. Olfactory and auditory cues can be used, for example, to increase reactivation of associated memories during post-learning sleep. Intensifying neocortical slow oscillations (the hallmark of slow wave sleep (SWS)) by electrical or auditory stimulation and modulating specific neurotransmitters such as noradrenaline and glutamate likewise facilitates memory processing during sleep. With this evidence in mind, this article concludes by discussing different methodological caveats and ethical issues that should be considered when thinking about using sleep for cognitive enhancement in everyday applications.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Endocrine and Autonomic Systems, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
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In Cognitive Neuroscience
Citations in the corpus
- Replay in Deep Learning: Current Approaches and Missing Biological Elements (2021, neutral): “Non– rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep is strongly associated with consolidation of declarative memory (Diekelmann, 2014; Walker & Stickgold, 2010).”
- Current issues related to motor sequence learning in humans (2018, background): “For example, a few studies have demonstrated MSL-consolidation benefits following experimental enhancement of spindle activity using transcranial alternating current stimulation [63 ], or by inducing reactivation of memory traces through olfactory/auditory stimulation using targeted memory reactivat”
- A single pair of neurons links sleep to memory consolidation in Drosophila melanogaster (2015, background): “, 2011) and other animals (Rasch and Born, 2013; Diekelmann, 2014), but it is unclear how sleep and memory circuits interact to facilitate memory consolidation.”