Clinical trial NCT03227406: The Evolution of Memories Across Wake and Sleep
Official title: The Evolution of Memories Across Wake and Sleep
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Sleep Deprivation
Sleep
Keywords: sleep
memory
REM sleep
slow wave sleep
cognition
sleep spindles
Lead sponsor: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
First posted: 2017-07-24
Enrollment: 276
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 40
Standard ages: ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE

Brief summary: To further understanding of the relationship between sleep and memory the investigators will address and attempt to answer three questions, (1) how memories evolve across wake and sleep, (2) how different aspects of this memory evolution are reflected both behaviorally and in the EEG signal, and (3) what stages and features of sleep affect memory evolution. Together, these studies will provide a greater breadth and depth of knowledge concerning sleep's role in memory consolidation. Such knowledge would be of practical importance for educational practices, whether in schools, on the job, or in the military, and would also provide valuable information to the fields of sleep medicine and psychiatry, where interactions between sleep disorders and cognitive functioning are of great importance.

Detailed description: Goal 1: How do memories evolve across wake and sleep? The investigators are interested in how specific memories are selected for change across periods of wake and sleep, and in characterizing the manner in which those memories change. There has been research into broad areas of memory, such as procedural and declarative memory, but other forms of memory, such as semantic memory, remain unexplored, as well as different subtypes of memory within these broad areas. Additionally, it is presently unknown how memories are selected for subsequent processing during sleep and wake. The investigators aim to characterize which memories change, how they are selected, and how they change differently over periods that include sleep versus periods during which participants remain awake.

Goal 2: How are these changes reflected behaviorally and in the EEG signal? The investigators will employ and develop specific behavioral and electrophysiological tasks and measures that allow one to probe the state of a particular type of memory and determine how it changes over periods of wake and sleep. EEG signals may be informative about the status of a memory during behavioral performance as well as during both waking and sleeping offline states.

Goal 3: What stages and features of sleep affect memory evolution? In the cases in which sleep in particular is found or suspected to influence memories in a unique way, the investigators will assess which stages and features of sleep are involved in that evolution. Generally, this will be accomplished by correlating measures such as time spent in a sleep stage, prominence of particular brain oscillations, or density of spindles with changes in behavior or in other EEG metrics

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* willing and able to follow the protocol
* willing to refrain from alcohol and recreational drugs for the duration of the protocol
* in some cases, English as a first language, normal hearing, and/or normal or corrected to normal vision is required

Exclusion Criteria:

* self-reported sleep disturbances
* a history of mental illness
* the use of any drugs that could affect either sleep or cognitive functioning (e.g., sleeping pills or antidepressants)

Primary outcomes:
measure: Motor sequence task improvement
timeFrame: 4-24 hrs
measure: Psychomotor vigilance task lapse rate
timeFrame: 4-24 hrs
measure: Serial reaction time test improvement
timeFrame: 4-24 hrs
measure: Visual discrimination task improvement
timeFrame: 4-24 hrs
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Sleep architecture (absolute times)
timeFrame: 4-24 hrs
measure: Sleep architecture (percent times)
timeFrame: 4-24 hrs
measure: Spindle
timeFrame: 4-24 hrs
measure: Sleep microstructure
timeFrame: 4-24 hrs
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Boston
country: United States
facility: Robert Stickgold
state: Massachusetts
Study officials:
affiliation: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
name: Robert Stickgold, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: