Boosting Memory During Sleep

While our bodies rest, our brains keep learning, replaying experiences to solidify our memories and improve our future performance. Genevieve Albouy, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Health & Kinesiology at the University of Utah College of Health, studies this process of memory consolidation, looking for ways learning might be enhanced. Her group’s work could help researchers find ways to improve motor learning when it declines due to aging or neurological disease.

Patterns of neural activity associated with new skills can be replayed by the brain spontaneously, which is important for long-term memory storage. Those patterns can also be provoked with cues linked to the learning experience, in a procedure known as targeted memory reactivation. Albouy and her team used this approach to reactivate the memory of the sequence of movements people learned during the day. Participants heard a sound before they began learning the sequence, then again while they slept after their lesson. When the memory was reactivated with sound while they slept, they were able to complete the sequence more quickly after their nap. After a full night’s sleep, they were able to do it even faster, and the performance-enhancing effect of memory reactivation persisted. The team found that the memory-reactivating sound cues work best in specific time windows during the brain’s slow waves that are critical for neuroplasticity during sleep. Their work exploring how targeted memory reactivation impacts both behavior and brain activity could help researchers find ways to improve motor learning when it declines due to aging or neurological disease.

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Boosting Memory During Sleep | PI: Genevieve Albouy, PhD