Seminar «Sound stimulation in slow wave sleep – effects on memory consolidation»

Centre for Cognition & Decision Making invites you to a seminar 

«Sound stimulation in slow wave sleep – effects on memory consolidation»

by Miika Leminen

MA(psych), MSc(tech), Licensed psychologist, Researcher
Institute of Behavioural Sciences University of Helsinki, Finland &
Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience Aarhus University, Denmark

In a recent study, Ngo, Martinez, Born & Mölle (2013, Neuron), used an auditory stimulus that was phase-locked to slow-wave sleep (SWS) delta waves. The results showed increased activity of both slow waves and sleep spindles, and more remarkably, improvement of memory recall in an associated word pair memory task. In the current study, the main goal was to replicate these results and additionally test the effect with different memory tasks, as well as to investigate its neural mechanism and possible side effects.
Results showed that the SWS delta wave phase-locked sound stimulation significantly increased both slow wave and sleep spindle activity. The memory performance in word pair task was also improved, whereas the mood questionnaire showed less overnight decrease in the tension factor.
However, sound stimulation did not significantly affect the subjective sleep quality. These results indicate that the SWS targeted sound stimulation is capable of improving the memory consolidation, however, the effect is dependent on the memory material and task.

Date:       18.09.14

Time:       17.00

Address:  Volgogradsky Prosp., 46B

Room:     108

If you need a pass to the HSE, please contact Anastasia Plotnikova via email: aplotnikova@hse.ru

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