title: Offline processing of memories induced by perceptual visual learning during subsequent wakefulness and sleep: A behavioral study.
abstract: To further characterize perceptual memory consolidation during sleep, we used a coarse orientation discrimination task in which participants had to discriminate the orientation of orthogonal gratings occluded by increasing levels of noise. In a first study (N = 11), we showed that the learning effect in this task is retinotopic (position-specific) and orientation specific. In a second experiment, we assessed the effect of nocturnal sleep, as opposed to the effect of time, on perceptual learning. A first group of participants was trained in the morning, tested in the evening and retested the next morning (morning-evening-morning, MEM, N = 11); a second group was trained in the evening, tested the next morning, and retested in the evening (evening-morning-evening; EME; N = 12). Between training and testing, EME subjects improved significantly more (after a night of sleep) than MEM subjects (after 12 waking hours). Similarly, between test and retest, performance of MEM subjects (after a full night of sleep) improved significantly more than in EME subjects (after 12 further waking hours). These results suggest a beneficial effect of sleep on coarse orientation discrimination. Further studies are needed to characterize the neural correlates of this perceptual learning and the offline consolidation of perceptual memory.
authors.affiliation: Cyclotron Research Centre, University of Liège, Belgium. lmatarazzo@ulg.ac.be
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Matarazzo
authors.forename: Edit
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Frankó
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Maquet
authors.forename: Rufin
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Vogels
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014851:Wakefulness / Q000502:physiology*