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