Grant: Project Grant

Memories are a fundamental part of our identity, as they guide our behavior in everyday activities. For this reason, an abundance of studies using a large arsenal of neuroscience methods has been carried out, not only to understand how memories are formed and maintained overtime (through the process called 'memory consolidation'), but also to uncover factors and conditions that can enhance one's memory capacity. This research, including work conducted in my laboratory, has revealed that the consolidation of declarative (capacity to retain facts and events) and procedural (ability to acquire motor skills) memories can be enhanced by sleep, more precisely by specific oscillatory electrical brain activity that can be observed in deeper sleep stages. Despite significant progress in this field, however, we still do not know whether the consolidation of those two forms of memory on similar or different action mechanisms, and whether it depends on the oscillatory brain activity occurring in the same or different sleep stages. To answer these research questions, we plan to conduct three studies in which we will record the brain activity during task performance and sleep. In two of these studies we will also deliver auditory stimulation during precise sleep phases, in sync with specific oscillatory electrical brain activity, that are expected to enhance memory consolidation. These studies will allow us to compare directly the mechanisms underlying the consolidation of procedural and declarative memories. Moreover, the results and technical expertise developed therein will provide a basis for the development of non-invasive brain stimulation approaches that can improve memory consolidation when this capacity is impaired by aging or neurodegenerative disease, such as dementia.