Prof. Jan Born | About the memory function of sleep

Mind Meeting

  • Date: Nov 14, 2019
  • Time: 03:30 PM - 04:45 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Prof. Jan Born
  • Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology, University Tübingen, Germany
  • Location: MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
  • Room: Wilhelm Wundt Room (A400)
  • Host: Department of Psychology
  • Contact: garvert@cbs.mpg.de
Whereas memories are optimally encoded and retrieved when the brain is awake, the consolidation and formation of long-term memory requires an offline mode of processing as optimally established only during sleep. Based on evidence from behavioral and neurophysiological studies in humans and rodents, I will consider the formation of long-term memory during sleep as an “active systems consolidation” process in which the repeated neuronal replay of representations originating from the hippocampus during slow-wave sleep (SWS) leads to a gradual transformation and integration of representations in neocortical networks. I will highlight three features of this process: (i) Hippocampal replay that, by capturing episodic memory aspects, drives consolidation of both hippocampus-dependent and non-hippocampus-dependent memory; (ii) brain oscillations hallmarking SWS and rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep that provide mechanisms to regulate both information flow across distant brain networks and local synaptic plasticity; and (iii) qualitative transformations of memories during systems consolidation resulting in abstracted, gist-like representations.

Poster
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