title: Cueing vocabulary during sleep increases theta activity during later recognition testing.
abstract: Neural oscillations in the theta band have repeatedly been implicated in successful memory encoding and retrieval. Several recent studies have shown that memory retrieval can be facilitated by reactivating memories during their consolidation during sleep. However, it is still unknown whether reactivation during sleep also enhances subsequent retrieval-related neural oscillations. We have recently demonstrated that foreign vocabulary cues presented during sleep improve later recall of the associated translations. Here, we examined the effect of cueing foreign vocabulary during sleep on oscillatory activity during subsequent recognition testing after sleep. We show that those words that were replayed during sleep after learning (cued words) elicited stronger centroparietal theta activity during recognition as compared to noncued words. The reactivation-induced increase in theta oscillations during later recognition testing might reflect a strengthening of individual memory traces and the integration of the newly learned words into the mental lexicon by cueing during sleep.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Schreiner
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.|Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Maurice
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Göldi
authors.affiliation: University Research Priority Program "Dynamics of Healthy Aging," University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.|Zurich Center for Interdisciplinary Sleep Research (ZiS), Zurich, Switzerland.|Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Björn
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rasch
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D013826:Theta Rhythm / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: EEG; Memory reactivation; Recognition memory; Sleep; Theta