title: Emotional arousal modulates oscillatory correlates of targeted memory reactivation during NREM, but not REM sleep.
abstract: Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is considered to preferentially reprocess emotionally arousing memories. We tested this hypothesis by cueing emotional vs. neutral memories during REM and NREM sleep and wakefulness by presenting associated verbal memory cues after learning. Here we show that cueing during NREM sleep significantly improved memory for emotional pictures, while no cueing benefit was observed during REM sleep. On the oscillatory level, successful memory cueing during NREM sleep resulted in significant increases in theta and spindle oscillations with stronger responses for emotional than neutral memories. In contrast during REM sleep, solely cueing of neutral (but not emotional) memories was associated with increases in theta activity. Our results do not support a preferential role of REM sleep for emotional memories, but rather suggest that emotional arousal modulates memory replay and consolidation processes and their oscillatory correlates during NREM sleep.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Psychiatric Hospital University of Zurich, Switzerland.|Institute of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.|Zurich Center for Interdisciplinary Sleep Research (ZiS), University of Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Mick
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lehmann
authors.affiliation: Zurich Center for Interdisciplinary Sleep Research (ZiS), University of Zurich, Switzerland.|Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Schreiner
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Psychiatric Hospital University of Zurich, Switzerland.|Zurich Center for Interdisciplinary Sleep Research (ZiS), University of Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Erich
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Seifritz
authors.affiliation: Zurich Center for Interdisciplinary Sleep Research (ZiS), University of Zurich, Switzerland.|Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Björn
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rasch
mesh_terms: D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D004562:Electrocardiography; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004576:Electromyography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D012895:Sleep, REM / Q000502:physiology; D014851:Wakefulness / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult