The Effect Of Sleep On Memory Consolidation

Sleep has always been an interest topic. In addition to elimination of physical and mental fatigue, sleep also may work in another way and impact cognitive activities. Recently, in the field of sleep research, the effect of sleep on memory consolidation plays an important role. Sleep provides a suitable environment for memory consolidation that means the practiced and the initial encoding memory traces are consolidated, then transfer to the more stable form.In the theory section of the dissertation, the related concepts of memory consolidation and sleep are introduced; the impact factors of sleep-dependent memory consolidation are reviewed, and the neural mechanisms behind this phenomenon are summarized.In the experiment section, Serial Reaction Time Task (SRTT) paradigm is used to explore the impact of consciousness on sleep-dependent memory consolidationThe study included three experiments:In the first experiment, Serial Reaction Time Task is used. Subjects are separated into two groups:implicit group and explicit group by introduction. It aimed to verify only explicit memory consolidation is sleep-dependent. On the basis of first study, experiment 2 and experiment 3 aimed to discuss the question deeply.In the second experiment, the multi-dimensional sequence learning paradigm is used for improving the consciousness of sequence learning. It aimed to explore whether the higher level of consciousness leads to sleep-dependent memory consolidation. In the third experiment, the dual task paradigm is used, because the secondary task interfere the sequence learning, It explored whether the lower level of consciousness impact the sleep-dependent memory consolidation.The research got the following findings:1.in partial sequence learning tasks, sleep involved in the process of memory consolidation, which indicates the existence of sleep-dependent memory consolidation existence; 2. The level of consciousness impact the sleep-dependent memory consolidation:In explicit learning and multi-dimensional implicit learning tasks which needs more consciousness attendance, memory consolidation depended on the occurrence of sleep; however, in the single dimension and dual tasks sequence learning which obtains less consciousness attendance, sleep-dependent memory consolidation was not observed.