Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
Research Article

Autonomic activity during sleep predicts memory consolidation in humans

Lauren N. Whitehurst, View ORCID ProfileNicola Cellini, Elizabeth A. McDevitt, Katherine A. Duggan, and Sara C. Mednick
  1. aDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521;
  2. bDepartment of General Psychology, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy

See allHide authors and affiliations

PNAS June 28, 2016 113 (26) 7272-7277; first published June 13, 2016; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1518202113
Lauren N. Whitehurst
aDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Nicola Cellini
aDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521;
bDepartment of General Psychology, University of Padua, 35131 Padua, Italy
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Nicola Cellini
Elizabeth A. McDevitt
aDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Katherine A. Duggan
aDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Sara C. Mednick
aDepartment of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: smednick@ucr.edu
  1. Edited by Thomas D. Albright, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, and approved May 6, 2016 (received for review September 12, 2015)

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Significance

We present the first evidence, to our knowledge, that the autonomic nervous system (ANS) plays a role in associative memory consolidation during sleep. Compared with a Quiet Wake control condition, performance improvement was associated with vagally mediated ANS activity [as measured by high-frequency (HF) heart rate variability (HRV)] during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. In particular, up to 73% of the proportion of improvement in associative memory performance could be accounted for by considering both traditionally reported sleep features (i.e., minutes spent in sleep stages and sleep spindles) and HF HRV. We hypothesize that central nervous system processes that favor peripheral vagal activity during REM sleep may lead to increases in plasticity that promote associative processing.

Abstract

Throughout history, psychologists and philosophers have proposed that good sleep benefits memory, yet current studies focusing on the relationship between traditionally reported sleep features (e.g., minutes in sleep stages) and changes in memory performance show contradictory findings. This discrepancy suggests that there are events occurring during sleep that have not yet been considered. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) shows strong variation across sleep stages. Also, increases in ANS activity during waking, as measured by heart rate variability (HRV), have been correlated with memory improvement. However, the role of ANS in sleep-dependent memory consolidation has never been examined. Here, we examined whether changes in cardiac ANS activity (HRV) during a daytime nap were related to performance on two memory conditions (Primed and Repeated) and a nonmemory control condition on the Remote Associates Test. In line with prior studies, we found sleep-dependent improvement in the Primed condition compared with the Quiet Wake control condition. Using regression analyses, we compared the proportion of variance in performance associated with traditionally reported sleep features (model 1) vs. sleep features and HRV during sleep (model 2). For both the Primed and Repeated conditions, model 2 (sleep + HRV) predicted performance significantly better (73% and 58% of variance explained, respectively) compared with model 1 (sleep only, 46% and 26% of variance explained, respectively). These findings present the first evidence, to our knowledge, that ANS activity may be one potential mechanism driving sleep-dependent plasticity.

  • sleep
  • heart rate variability
  • memory
  • consolidation
  • vagal activity

Footnotes

  • ↵1L.N.W. and N.C. contributed equally to this work.

  • ↵2To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: smednick{at}ucr.edu.
  • Author contributions: E.A.M. and S.C.M. designed research; L.N.W., E.A.M., and K.A.D. performed research; L.N.W., N.C., K.A.D., and S.C.M. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; L.N.W., N.C., and E.A.M. analyzed data; and L.N.W., N.C., and S.C.M. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1518202113/-/DCSupplemental.

View Full Text
PreviousNext
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Autonomic activity during sleep predicts memory consolidation in humans
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Autonomic activity in sleep predicts consolidation
Lauren N. Whitehurst, Nicola Cellini, Elizabeth A. McDevitt, Katherine A. Duggan, Sara C. Mednick
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2016, 113 (26) 7272-7277; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1518202113

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Autonomic activity in sleep predicts consolidation
Lauren N. Whitehurst, Nicola Cellini, Elizabeth A. McDevitt, Katherine A. Duggan, Sara C. Mednick
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2016, 113 (26) 7272-7277; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1518202113
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Article Classifications

  • Biological Sciences
  • Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 113 (26)
Table of Contents

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Results
    • SI Materials and Methods
    • Discussion
    • Materials and Methods
    • Acknowledgments
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Water from a faucet fills a glass.
News Feature: How “forever chemicals” might impair the immune system
Researchers are exploring whether these ubiquitous fluorinated molecules might worsen infections or hamper vaccine effectiveness.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Naumov.
Reflection of clouds in the still waters of Mono Lake in California.
Inner Workings: Making headway with the mysteries of life’s origins
Recent experiments and simulations are starting to answer some fundamental questions about how life came to be.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Radoslaw Lecyk.
Cave in coastal Kenya with tree growing in the middle.
Journal Club: Small, sharp blades mark shift from Middle to Later Stone Age in coastal Kenya
Archaeologists have long tried to define the transition between the two time periods.
Image credit: Ceri Shipton.
Illustration of groups of people chatting
Exploring the length of human conversations
Adam Mastroianni and Daniel Gilbert explore why conversations almost never end when people want them to.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Panda bear hanging in a tree
How horse manure helps giant pandas tolerate cold
A study finds that giant pandas roll in horse manure to increase their cold tolerance.
Image credit: Fuwen Wei.

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Special Feature Articles – Most Recent
  • List of Issues

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Subscribers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Cozzarelli Prize
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates
  • FAQs
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Rights & Permissions
  • About
  • Contact

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490