title: Slow wave sleep and accelerated forgetting.
abstract: We investigated whether the benefit of slow wave sleep (SWS) for memory consolidation typically observed in healthy individuals is disrupted in people with accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF) due to epilepsy. SWS is thought to play an active role in declarative memory in healthy individuals and, furthermore, electrographic epileptiform activity is often more prevalent during SWS than during wakefulness or other sleep stages. We studied the relationship between SWS and the benefit of sleep for memory retention using a word-pair associates task. In both the ALF and the healthy control groups, sleep conferred a memory benefit. However, the relationship between the amount of SWS and sleep-related memory benefits differed significantly between the groups. In healthy participants, the amount of SWS correlated positively with sleep-related memory benefits. In stark contrast, the more SWS, the smaller the sleep-related memory benefit in the ALF group. Therefore, contrary to its role in healthy people, SWS-associated brain activity appears to be deleterious for memory in patients with ALF.
authors.affiliation: Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: Kathryn E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Atherton
authors.affiliation: Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: Anna C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Nobre
authors.affiliation: John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Alpar S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Lazar
authors.affiliation: Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: Katharina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wulff
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK.
authors.forename: Roger G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Whittaker
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK.
authors.forename: Vandana
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Dhawan
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
authors.forename: Zsolt I
authors.initials: ZI
authors.lastname: Lazar
authors.affiliation: Cognitive and Behavioural Neurology, Peninsular Medical School, University of Exeter, UK.
authors.forename: Adam Z
authors.initials: AZ
authors.lastname: Zeman
authors.affiliation: Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. Electronic address: chris.butler@ndcn.ox.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Christopher R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Butler
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D014851:Wakefulness / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Accelerated long-term forgetting; Consolidation; Memory; Slow wave sleep; Transient epileptic amnesia