Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Schreiner, Thomas
• Griffiths, Benjamin J.
• Kutlu, Merve
• Vollmar, Christian
• Kaufmann, Elisabeth
• Quach, Stefanie
• Remi, Jan
• Noachtar, Soheyl
• Staudigl, Tobias

Titel

Spindle-locked ripples mediate memory reactivation during human NREM sleep

Ist Teil von

• Nature communications, 2024-06, Vol.15 (1), p.5249-15, Article 5249

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Memory consolidation relies in part on the reactivation of previous experiences during sleep. The precise interplay of sleep-related oscillations (slow oscillations, spindles and ripples) is thought to coordinate the information flow between relevant brain areas, with ripples mediating memory reactivation. However, in humans empirical evidence for a role of ripples in memory reactivation is lacking. Here, we investigated the relevance of sleep oscillations and specifically ripples for memory reactivation during human sleep using targeted memory reactivation. Intracranial electrophysiology in epilepsy patients and scalp EEG in healthy participants revealed that elevated levels of slow oscillation - spindle activity coincided with the read-out of experimentally induced memory reactivation. Importantly, spindle-locked ripples recorded intracranially from the medial temporal lobe were found to be correlated with the identification of memory reactivation during non-rapid eye movement sleep. Our findings establish ripples as key-oscillation for sleep-related memory reactivation in humans and emphasize the importance of the coordinated interplay of the cardinal sleep oscillations. Whether and how spindle-locked ripples contribute to memory consolidation by mediating memory reactivation in humans is not fully understood. The authors show that ripples in the human medial temporal lobe are associated with memory reactivation, establishing them as key factor in sleep-based memory re-processing.