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December 4-10, 2000 |
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If you choose to follow any links to the abstracts and/or complete text of articles, books, and documents listed below, you will be leaving the Strategian Web site. If you wish to return to this page from the Web page you are sent to, please use the Back option of your browser. Feature Items: Pierre Maquet Sleep on it! Practicing a procedural memory task does not improve performance until hours later. Two new studies show that sleep is absolutely necessary for this memory consolidation. (... a concise overview of two studies [Robert Stickgold, et al. and Steffen Gais, et al.] that look at the hypothesis ... that sleep is involved in reprocessing memory traces and leads to memory consolidation. According to the author, these two studies strengthen this hypothesis considerably by providing evidence that sleep, particularly slow wave sleep [SWS] , is absolutely required for improvement on a visual discrimination task. The author states that the two new papers extend this result substantially by demonstrating that the first night after training is crucial for skill acquisition and that both early [mainly SWS] and late [mainly REM or rapid eye movement] sleep are needed to reach optimal performance. Other keywords and phrases -- deprivation -- from the text of the article) Nature Neuroscience Volume 3, Number 12 (December 2000): 1235-1236. Robert Stickgold, LaTanya James, and J. Allan Hobson Visual Discrimination Learning Requires Sleep After Training. (... the authors found that performance on a visual discrimination task showed maximal improvement 48-96 hours after initial training, even without intervening practice. The authors state that the findings of this study, when paired with previous research by the principal author, demonstrates that sleep within 30 hours of training is absolutely required for improved performance. Again, along with previous research, the authors state that these results suggest that overnight improvement on the visual discrimination task requires at least three temporally distinct steps, the first occurring during initial training and the other two occurring during subsequent early night SWS [slow wave sleep] and late night REM [rapid eye movement] sleep, respectively. See the article by Pierre Maquet for an overview of this article. Other keywords and phrases -- deprived, learning, memory consolidation, recovery sleep, skill learning, sleep deprivation -- from the text of the article) Nature Neuroscience Volume 3, Number 12 (December 2000): 1237-1238. Steffen Gais, Werner Plihal, Ullrich Wagner, and Jan Born Early Sleep Triggers Memory for Early Visual Discrimination Skills. (... previous research has indicated that it takes several hours [8 or more hours] after training has ended for humans to show improvement in performing a visual discrimination task. In this study, the authors found that this improvement strongly depends on sleep taking place during this interval of hours after training has ended. The kind of training or practice that results from a visual discrimination task involves procedural knowledge or procedural memory. Procedural knowledge refers to implicit [or pre-attentive] learning of 'habits' or 'how to' memories by practicing sensory and motor skills, respectively. The authors compared the effects of 'early' and 'late' sleep in order to try to determine what specific aspect of sleep might be responsible for the skills improvement that occurs after sleep has taken place. The sleep that takes place early on during a sleep period is usually dominated by slow wave sleep [SWS], and the sleep that occurs late is usually dominated by rapid eye movement [REM] sleep. The authors found that discrimination skills significantly improved over early sleep, improved even more over a whole night's sleep, but did not improve after late sleep alone. The authors conclude that these findings suggest that procedural memory formation is prompted by slow-wave sleep-related processes. See the article by Pierre Maquet for an overview of this article. Other keywords and phrases -- consolidation of memories, deprivation, deprive, neuron, visual processing -- from the text of the abstract and the article; please see the bibliography) Nature Neuroscience Volume 3, Number 12 (December 2000): 1335-1339. Editorial: Why Do We Sleep? (... a short interesting article that provides a quick overview of current research about sleep--why humans sleep, what function or functions does sleep perform, which of the two major types of sleep are more important, linking findings about sleep at the behavioral level with findings at the molecular level, etc. The editorial states that the average person requires about eight hours of sleep per night, but many otherwise healthy people continually deprive themselves of adequate sleep with consequences that include fatigue, poor decision-making and increased risk of accidents as well as impairment of memory. The editorial concludes perhaps as a more comprehensive theory of sleep emerges, common attitudes about sleep will also change. For instance, napping is considered normal in children, but in adults it carries a stigma of laziness and inefficiency, despite the fact that it can be extremely effective in improving alertness for many hours afterward. Other keywords and phrases -- circadian, genetic, homeostatic, hypocretin, memory consolidation, microsleep, neuron, orexin, rapid eye movement, REM, sleep deprivation, sleep pattern, songbird, slow wave sleep, SWS -- from the text of the article) Nature Neuroscience Volume 3, Number 12 (December 2000): 1225. Benoit I. Giasson and Virginia M.-Y. Lee A New Link Between Pesticides and Parkinson's Disease. (... a short article that provides an overview of recent research involving Parkinson's disease [PD] and its etiology [causes]. As the authors state Parkinson's disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases, affecting almost 1% of the population over 65. Though it has been extensively studied and many of its features and neuropathology have been well described, the underlying mechanisms and causes of the disease are still not clear. The authors especially review an article -- Ranjita Betarbet, Todd B. Sherer, Gillian MacKenzie, Monica Garcia-Osuna, Alexander V. Panov, and J. Timothy Greenamyre Chronic Systemic Pesticide Exposure Reproduces Features of Parkinson's Disease. Nature Neuroscience Volume 3, Number 12 (December 2000): 1301-1306. ... in which Betarbet, et al. report that chronic administration of rotenone, a widely used pesticide, can induce the major features of PD in rats. The authors summarize by saying although genetic factors certainly contribute to vulnerability, the most important risk factor for PD is age, consistent with the idea that chronic exposure to low levels of noxious substances over time may drive a molecular chain of events that eventually leads to PD. Other keywords and phrases -- cause, dopaminergic neurons, Lewy bodies, MPTP, mutation, substantia nigra, toxin -- from the text of the article; please see the bibliography) Nature Neuroscience Volume 3, Number 12 (December 2000): 1227-1228. How to find the above journals, magazines, and other publications? See Step 3: Locate of the Information Strategy for details. Questions about any or all of the above? Please let me know. |
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