title: Sleep does not facilitate insight in older adults.
abstract: Sleep has been shown to foster the process of insight generation in young adults during problem solving activities. Aging is characterized by substantial changes in sleep architecture altering memory consolidation. Whether sleep might promote the occurrence of insight in older adults as well has not yet been tested experimentally. To address this issue, we tested healthy young and old volunteers on an insight problem solving task, involving both explicit and implicit features, before and after a night of sleep or a comparable wakefulness period. Data showed that insight emerged significantly less frequently after a night of sleep in older adults compared to young. Moreover, there was no difference in the magnitude of insight occurrence following sleep and daytime -consolidation in aged participants. We further found that acquisition of implicit knowledge in the task before sleep potentiated the gain of insight in young participants, but this effect was not observed in aged participants. Overall, present findings demonstrate that a period of sleep does not significantly promote insight in problem solving in older adults.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Geneva Neuroscience Center, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Inter-University Laboratory of Human Movement Science-EA 7424, University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Villeurbanne, France. Electronic address: ursula.debarnot@univ-Lyon1.fr.
authors.forename: Ursula
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Debarnot
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Ricerca Traslazionale e delle Nuove Tecnologie in Medicina e Chirurgia, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Italy; School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Marta
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Ricerca Traslazionale e delle Nuove Tecnologie in Medicina e Chirurgia, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Italy; Department of Developmental Neuroscience, IRCCS Fondazione Stella Maris, Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Ugo
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Faraguna
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Geneva Neuroscience Center, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schwartz
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Ricerca Traslazionale e delle Nuove Tecnologie in Medicina e Chirurgia, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Italy.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sebastiani
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D008297:Male; D000069077:Memory Consolidation / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult