TY - JOUR
T1 - An opportunistic theory of cellular and systems consolidation
AU - Mednick, Sara C.
AU - Cai, Denise J.
AU - Shuman, Tristan
AU - Anagnostaras, Stephan
AU - Wixted, John T.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (K01 MH080992 and NIMH T32-MH015795-30) and a UCSD Interdisciplinary Collaboratory Grant. We thank William Alaynick for design consultation.
PY - 2011/10
Y1 - 2011/10
N2 - Memories are often classified as hippocampus dependent or independent, and sleep has been found to facilitate both, but in different ways. In this Opinion, we explore the optimal neural state for cellular and systems consolidation of hippocampus-dependent memories that benefit from sleep. We suggest that these two kinds of consolidation, which are ordinarily treated separately, overlap in time and jointly benefit from a period of reduced interference (during which no new memories are formed). Conditions that result in reduced interference include slow wave sleep (SWS), NMDA receptor antagonists, benzodiazepines, alcohol and acetylcholine antagonists. We hypothesize that the consolidation of hippocampal-dependent memories might not depend on SWS per se. Instead, the brain opportunistically consolidates previously encoded memories whenever the hippocampus is not otherwise occupied by the task of encoding new memories.
AB - Memories are often classified as hippocampus dependent or independent, and sleep has been found to facilitate both, but in different ways. In this Opinion, we explore the optimal neural state for cellular and systems consolidation of hippocampus-dependent memories that benefit from sleep. We suggest that these two kinds of consolidation, which are ordinarily treated separately, overlap in time and jointly benefit from a period of reduced interference (during which no new memories are formed). Conditions that result in reduced interference include slow wave sleep (SWS), NMDA receptor antagonists, benzodiazepines, alcohol and acetylcholine antagonists. We hypothesize that the consolidation of hippocampal-dependent memories might not depend on SWS per se. Instead, the brain opportunistically consolidates previously encoded memories whenever the hippocampus is not otherwise occupied by the task of encoding new memories.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80053111562&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.tins.2011.06.003
DO - 10.1016/j.tins.2011.06.003
M3 - Review article
C2 - 21742389
AN - SCOPUS:80053111562
SN - 0166-2236
VL - 34
SP - 504
EP - 514
JO - Trends in Neurosciences
JF - Trends in Neurosciences
IS - 10
ER -