Skip Navigation


Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on October 1, 2008
Cerebral Cortex 2009 19(5):1158-1166; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn155
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrowOA All Versions of this Article:
19/5/1158    most recent
bhn155v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Nishida, M.
Right arrow Articles by Walker, M. P.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Nishida, M.
Right arrow Articles by Walker, M. P.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 2008 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

REM Sleep, Prefrontal Theta, and the Consolidation of Human Emotional Memory

Masaki Nishida1,2, Jori Pearsall1,3, Randy L. Buckner3,4 and Matthew P. Walker1

1 Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory Department of Psychology and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94702, USA, 2 Section of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Tokyo Medical and Dental University Graduate School, 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan, 3 Department of Psychology, Center for Brain Science, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard University, Davis, CA 95618, USA, 4 Departments of Psychiatry and Radiology, Anthinoula A. Martinos Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA

Address correspondence to Matthew P. Walker, PhD, Department of Psychology, Tolman Hall 3331, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA. Email: mpwalker{at}berkeley.edu.

Both emotion and sleep are independently known to modulate declarative memory. Memory can be facilitated by emotion, leading to enhanced consolidation across increasing time delays. Sleep also facilitates offline memory processing, resulting in superior recall the next day. Here we explore whether rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and aspects of its unique neurophysiology, underlie these convergent influences on memory. Using a nap paradigm, we measured the consolidation of neutral and negative emotional memories, and the association with REM-sleep electrophysiology. Subjects that napped showed a consolidation benefit for emotional but not neutral memories. The No-Nap control group showed no evidence of a consolidation benefit for either memory type. Within the Nap group, the extent of emotional memory facilitation was significantly correlated with the amount of REM sleep and also with right-dominant prefrontal theta power during REM. Together, these data support the role of REM-sleep neurobiology in the consolidation of emotional human memories, findings that have direct translational implications for affective psychiatric and mood disorders.

Key Words: consolidation • emotion • memory • REM • prefrontal • theta


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Learn. Mem.Home page
D. J. Cai, T. Shuman, E. M. Harrison, J. R. Sage, and S. G. Anagnostaras
Sleep deprivation and Pavlovian fear conditioning
Learn. Mem., September 30, 2009; 16(10): 595 - 599.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 J. Neurosci.Home page
V. Sterpenich, G. Albouy, A. Darsaud, C. Schmidt, G. Vandewalle, T. T. Dang Vu, M. Desseilles, C. Phillips, C. Degueldre, E. Balteau, et al.
Sleep Promotes the Neural Reorganization of Remote Emotional Memory
J. Neurosci., April 22, 2009; 29(16): 5143 - 5152.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.