rule generalization; replay activities; memory consolidation; auditory reactivation; electrophysiology; sleep
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(6), 1352-1357.
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Studies in humans have shown a beneficial impact of sleep on abstraction, generalization and insights into hidden regularities. To explain these effects, the “information overlap to abstract” hypothesis suggests that new schemata are formed during slow wave sleep due to overlap in re-activated memories. These new schemata selectively strengthen shared elements of recent memories and underlie cognitive abstraction and generalization. To test this hypothesis for sleep dependent auditory rule generalization learning, we will combine in a cross-species approach non-invasive EEG recordings in humans with invasive measurements in rats. Our purpose is to draw inferences from the rat model about the underlying neuronal mechanisms in humans by using similar experiments of auditory rule learning in both species. We aim to reactivate rule-related memories by auditory re-presentation of the previously learned auditory rules during slow wave sleep. After sleep, we will test the impact of this auditory memory reactivation on the ability to generalize the rule to novel stimuli. To study the efficiency of auditory memory reactivation with respect to the ongoing up- or downstates of slow wave sleep, we will present auditory stimuli at different phases of the slow oscillation in a closed-loop approach. In accordance with the system memory consolidation hypothesis, we expect a crucial involvement of neocortical regions in long-term memory embedding and rule related schema formation. Based on recordings of EEG in humans, local field potentials and single neurons in rats, we will be able to relate neocortical activities on different neuronal levels to rule reactivation and generalization. We expect replay activities of neuronal ensembles related to previous auditory rule learning in the primary auditory cortex and in the medial prefrontal cortex. We hypothesize that enhanced replay activity by auditory reactivation takes place during slow wave sleep, and is associated with rule generalization performance. Taken together, this proposed project will provide an innovative cross-species approach to obtain new insights in sleep dependent rule generalization learning with respect to current debates in the research field of sleep and memory.