Learning during sleep: pitfalls, advances and promises

Close metadata

Recommended articles:

Melatonin for the regulation of sleep and other biological rhythms. S.S. Korsakov Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry. 2024;(5-2):8-13

Effects of slow-wave sleep fragmentation and rapid eye movement sleep fragmentation on melatonin secretion. S.S. Korsakov Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry. 2024;(5-2):26-32

Management of patients with insomnia and polymorbidity. A draft of the clinical guidelines. S.S. Korsakov Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry. 2024;(5-2):39-52

The interactions along the microbiota—gut—brain axis in the regulation of circadian rhythms, sleep mechanisms and disorders. S.S. Korsakov Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry. 2024;(5-2):79-86

Sleep disorders in patients with medication-overuse headache. S.S. Korsakov Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry. 2024;(5-2):93-98

Changes the level of differentiating growth factor — GDF 15 in patients with sleep apnea syndrome after aPAP-therapy: pilot study. S.S. Korsakov Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry. 2024;(5-2):118-124

Stress and sleep: Neurobiological aspects and modern options of insomnia therapy. S.S. Korsakov Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry. 2025;(5-2):14-21

The role of astrocytes, circadian rhythms and light pollution in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. S.S. Korsakov Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry. 2024;(6):20-25

App-based first aid learning: what applications do we have now?. Russian Journal of Anesthesiology and Reanimatology. 2024;(6):89-103

Neurobiological potential of astragaloside IV and prospects for its use in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. S.S. Korsakov Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry. 2025;(2):7-12

Sleep plays a crucial role in memory consolidation. Research dedicated to learning during sleep is based on a theory that new information can be also acquired in a sleep state. This review covers the studies that aim to form new memory traces during sleep that persist into wakefulness or try to uncover the mechanisms of such learning. The possibility of associative, perceptive and other forms of learning, primarily implicit learning, is shown.

Keywords:

sleep

learning

memory

memory consolidation

Authors:

Puchkova A.N.

Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia;
Pushkin State Russian Language Institute, Moscow, Russia

List of references:

Born J, Rasch B, Gais S. Sleep to Remember. Neurosci. 2006;12(5):410-424. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073858406292647
Inostroza M, Binder S, Born J. Sleep-dependency of episodic-like memory consolidation in rats. Behav Brain Res. 2013;237:15-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.BBR.2012.09.011
Sutherland GR, McNaughton B. Memory trace reactivation in hippocampal and neocortical neuronal ensembles. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2000;10(2):180-186. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0959-4388(00)00079-9
Tononi G, Cirelli C. Sleep and the price of plasticity: from synaptic and cellular homeostasis to memory consolidation and integration. Neuron. 2014;81(1):12-34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.12.025
Tononi G, Cirelli C. Sleep function and synaptic homeostasis. Sleep Med Rev. 2006;10(1):49-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2005.05.002
Schouten DI, Pereira SIR, Tops M, Louzada FM. State of the art on targeted memory reactivation: Sleep your way to enhanced cognition. Sleep Med Rev. 2017;32:123-131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2016.04.002
Fifer WP, Byrd DL, Kaku M, Eigsti IM, Isler JR, Grose-Fifer J, Tarullo AR, Balsam PD. Newborn infants learn during sleep. Proc Natl Acad Sci. 2010;107(22):10320-10323. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1005061107
Sambeth A, Ruohio K, Alku P, Fellman V, Huotilainen M. Sleeping newborns extract prosody from continuous speech. Clin Neurophysiol. 2008;119(2):332-341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2007.09.144
Cheour M, Martynova O, Näätänen R, Erkkola R, Sillanpää M, Kero P, Raz A, Kaipio ML, Hiltunen J, Aaltonen O, Savela J, Hämäläinen H. Speech sounds learned by sleeping newborns. Nature. 2002;415(6872):599-600. https://doi.org/10.1038/415599b
Scher MS. Ontogeny of EEG-sleep from neonatal through infancy periods. Sleep Med. 2008;9(6):615-636. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2007.08.014
Simon CW, Emmons WH. Learning during sleep? Psychol Bull. 1955;52(4):328-342. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0043733
Emmons WH, Simon CW. The Non-Recall of Material Presented during Sleep. Am J Psychol. 1956;69(1):76. https://doi.org/10.2307/1418117
Tani K, Yoshii N. Efficiency of verbal learning during sleep as related to the EEG pattern. Brain Res. 1970;17(2):277-285. https://doi.org/10.1016/0006-8993(70)90082-X
Wood JM, Bootzin RR, Kihlstrom JF, Schacter DL. Implicit and Explicit Memory for Verbal Information Presented During Sleep. Psychol Sci. 1992;3(4):236-239. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1992.tb00035.x
Ikeda K, Morotomi T. Classical Conditioning During Human NREM Sleep and Response Transfer to Wakefulness. Sleep. 1996;19(1):72-74. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/19.1.72
Arzi A, Sela L, Green A, Givaty G, Dagan Y, Sobel N. The Influence of Odorants on Respiratory Patterns in Sleep. Chem Senses. 2010;35(1):31-40. https://doi.org/10.1093/chemse/bjp079
Arzi A, Shedlesky L, Ben-Shaul M, Nasser K, Oksenberg A, Hairston IS, Sobel N. Humans can learn new information during sleep. Nat Neurosci. 2012;15(10):1460-1465. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3193
Arzi A, Holtzman Y, Samnon P, Eshel N, Harel E, Sobel N. Olfactory aversive conditioning during sleep reduces cigarette-smoking behavior. J Neurosci. 2014;34(46):15382-15393. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2291-14.2014
Canales-Johnson AF, Bekinschtein TA, Arzi A. Neural signatures of classical conditioning during human sleep. 2018. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/372037v1 https://doi.org/10.1101/372037
Andrillon T, Kouider S, Agus T, Pressnitzer D. Perceptual Learning of Acoustic Noise Generates Memory-Evoked Potentials. Curr Biol. 2015;25(21):2823-2829. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.027
Andrillon T, Pressnitzer D, Léger D, Kouider S. Formation and suppression of acoustic memories during human sleep. Nat Commun. 2017;8(1):179. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00071-z
Andrillon T, Kouider S. Implicit memory for words heard during sleep. Neuroscience of Consciousness. 2016;1:14. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niw014
Hennevin E, Hars B. Second-order conditioning during sleep. Psychobiology. 1992;20(2):166-176.
de Lavilléon G, Lacroix MM, Rondi-Reig L, Benchenane K. Explicit memory creation during sleep demonstrates a causal role of place cells in navigation. Nat Neurosci. 2015;18(4):493. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3970
Hennevin E, Huetz C, Edeline J-M. Neural representations during sleep: From sensory processing to memory traces. Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2007;87(3):416-440. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.NLM.2006.10.006
Plailly J, Howard JD, Gitelman DR, Gottfried JA. Attention to Odor Modulates Thalamocortical Connectivity in the Human Brain. J Neurosci. 2008;28(20):5257-5267. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5607-07.2008
Kovalzon VM. Osnovy somnologii: fiziologiya i neirokhimiya tsikla «bodrstvovanie—son». M.: BINOM. Laboratoriya znanii; 2011. (In Russ.)
Ermis U, Krakow K, Voss U. Arousal thresholds during human tonic and phasic REM sleep: Phasic and tonic REM sleep. J Sleep Res. 2010;19(3):400-406. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2010.00831.x
Sallinen M, Kaartinen J, Lyytinen H. Processing of auditory stimuli during tonic and phasic periods of REM sleep as revealed by event-related brain potentials. J Sleep Res. 1996;5(4):220-228. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2869.1996.00220.x
Nir Y, Tononi G. Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology. Trends Cogn Sci. 2010;14(2):88-100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2009.12.001
Diekelmann S. Sleep for cognitive enhancement. Front Syst Neurosci. 2014;8:46. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00046

Close metadata