title: Sleep unbinds memories from their emotional context.
abstract: Consistent evidence nowadays indicates that sleep protects declarative memory from lexical interference. However, little is known about its effect against emotional interference. In a within-subject counterbalanced design, participants learned a list of word pairs after a mood induction procedure (MIP), then slept or stayed awake during the post-learning night. After two recovery nights, half of the list was recalled after a similar mood induction than at the encoding session (no interference condition) and the other half after a different mood induction (interference condition). Amongst participants for whom the MIP was effective, an emotional interference effect appeared only in the sleep-deprived condition, with a lower recall of word pairs subjected to contextual interference than of the other pairs. These findings support the hypothesis of a decoupling between memories and their "affective blanket" during post-learning sleep, protecting recent memories against emotional contextual interference.
authors.affiliation: UR2NF, Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging Research Unit at CRCN - Centre de Recherches en Cognition et Neurosciences and UNI - ULB Neurosciences Institute, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium. Gaetane.Deliens@ulb.ac.be
authors.forename: Gaétane
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Deliens
authors.forename: Médhi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gilson
authors.forename: Rémy
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schmitz
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Peigneux
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D012892:Sleep Deprivation / Q000503:physiopathology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotion; Interference; Memory consolidation; Sleep deprivation