Stress at learning interacts with sleep to optimally consolidate emotional memories

学习压力与睡眠相互作用，以最佳方式巩固情感记忆

• 批准号: 1539361
• 负责人: Elizabeth Kensinger
• 金额: $ 55.1万
• 依托单位: Boston College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-07-15 至 2019-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1539361&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Stress; learning; interacts; sleep; optimally

We spend nearly a third of our lives sleeping, yet research is just beginning to shed light on the multitude of benefits that are conveyed by sleep. One important benefit of sleep is to strengthen the memories we form during the day, particularly if those memories have some future utility. But how is future utility determined? This research tests a new model which proposes that sleep selectively strengthens memories for events that are associated with elevated levels of stress hormones or with elevated physiological arousal, such as changes in heart rate or sweating, when we first encounter them. This research is significant for a number of reasons. In a society in which many people are chronically sleep deprived, and report high levels of stress, it is important to understand how interactions between stress and sleep may influence the ability for the human brain to store and remember information. This research will clarify how stressful situations are remembered over time, which may yield new insights into why sleep disruption often co-occurs with affective disorders (such as depression) and memory problems. The project provides training in the integrated use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), stress, and sleep scoring and recording methods; it continues a summer research exchange program between Boston College and Notre Dame; and it supports high school internships, exposing diverse students to neuroscience, a field that is not included in most high school curricula. The project also contains an outreach component that strives to inform community members of the importance of prioritizing sleep and the value of stress management.Emotional memories form the core of our personal histories, marking our greatest achievements and worst defeats. While our ability to remember and learn from these events is critical for survival, how we remember them can also influence the development of affective disorders, such as clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Negative experiences enjoy a privileged status in memory, being better remembered than most neutral events, yet there is a limited understanding of how such memories are consolidated and stored. The PIs' prior research demonstrated that sleep selectively preserves emotional memories, but only if participants had higher resting cortisol levels and elevated psychophysiological responses at the time of encoding. We now propose to directly manipulate encoding levels of stress and to examine how stress at encoding may enhance connectivity within emotional-memory neural networks (Aim 1); how sleep may preserve this enhanced connectivity over time (Aim 2); and how these effects of stress and sleep may combine to enhance emotional memory performance (Aim 3) and neural cohesiveness in emotional memory networks during memory retrieval (Aim 4). It is widely thought that stress disrupts sleep, and sleep affects sensitivity to stress, yet there are few empirical tests of their shared influence on cognition and emotion. However, these interactions are critical to understand given the 1) increase in stress-related illnesses and sleep disruption and the concurrent rise in affective disorders, 2) prevalence of PTSD in the military, and 3) likely impact of stress and sleep disruption in the classroom and workplace. By uniting the traditionally separate fields of sleep and stress, and examining the interactive effects of processes that unfold during encoding and consolidation, this novel research is expected to yield transformative findings. The proposal strengthens a productive collaboration between Elizabeth Kensinger at Boston College (BC), with expertise in affective neuroscience and Jessica Payne at Notre Dame (ND), with expertise in sleep and stress effects on memory.

我们将近三分之一的一生睡觉，但是研究才刚刚开始阐明睡眠所传达的许多好处。睡眠的一个重要好处是增强我们白天形成的记忆，尤其是如果这些记忆有一些未来的效用。 但是如何确定未来的公用事业？ 这项研究测试了一个新模型，该模型建议睡眠有选择地增强与升高压力荷尔蒙水平或生理唤醒升高的事件相关的事件的记忆，例如，当我们第一次遇到它们时，心率或出汗的变化。 由于多种原因，这项研究很重要。 在许多人长期被剥夺睡眠并报告高水平压力的社会中，重要的是要了解压力和睡眠之间的相互作用如何影响人脑存储和记住信息的能力。 这项研究将阐明随着时间的推移而记忆的压力，这可能会产生新的见解，说明为什么睡眠中断经常与情感障碍（例如抑郁症）和记忆问题共同占领。该项目提供了功能磁共振成像（fMRI），压力和睡眠评分和记录方法的综合使用培训；它延续了波士顿学院和巴黎圣母院之间的夏季研究交流计划；它支持高中实习，使多元化的学生接触到神经科学，该领域不包括在大多数高中课程中。 该项目还包含一个外展部分，旨在告知社区成员优先级睡眠和压力管理的价值的重要性。情感记忆构成了我们个人历史的核心，标志着我们最大的成就和最糟糕的失败。尽管我们记住和从这些事件中学习的能力对于生存至关重要，但我们如何记住它们也会影响情感障碍的发展，例如临床抑郁症和创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）。负面体验在记忆中享有特权的地位，比大多数中立事件都更好地记住了人们的记忆，但是对这些记忆的合并和存储方式有限。 PIS的先前研究表明，睡眠有选择地保留情感记忆，但前提是参与者在编码时的静息皮质醇水平较高，心理生理学反应升高。现在，我们建议直接操纵编码压力水平，并检查编码的压力如何增强情绪记忆神经网络中的连通性（AIM 1）；睡眠如何保持这种增强的连通性随着时间的流逝（AIM 2）；以及压力和睡眠的这些影响如何结合起来，以增强情绪记忆力的表现（AIM 3）和记忆检索期间情绪记忆网络中的神经凝聚力（AIM 4）。人们普遍认为，压力会破坏睡眠，睡眠会影响对压力的敏感性，但是对它们对认知和情感的共同影响几乎没有经验检验。但是，这些相互作用对于理解1）与压力相关的疾病增加和睡眠中断以及情感障碍同时增加，2）军事中PTSD的率以及3）可能对教室和工作场所的压力和睡眠破坏的影响。通过团结传统上分离的睡眠和压力领域，并检查编码和巩固过程中未展开的过程的互动效应，这项新型研究有望产生变革性的发现。该提案增强了波士顿学院（BC）的伊丽莎白·肯辛格（Elizabeth Kensinger）之间的富有成效的合作，在巴黎圣母院（ND）（ND）的情感神经科学和杰西卡·佩恩（Jessica Payne）方面具有专业知识，并在睡眠和压力上对记忆的影响方面具有专业知识。