Our EEG results revealed a significant increase in sleep spindle activity following memory vs. control cues, consistent with prior TMR work and suggesting memory reprocessing during sleep (6/8).
A homonym’s subordinate meaning (bark: dog noise vs. tree covering) is temporarily more accessible after it is encountered: word-meaning priming (WMP). Over 12 and 24 hrs, WMP is maintained by sleep vs. wake, suggesting a sleep consolidation effect on episodic memories of previous discourse (2/8).
Very happy to share our new preprint revealing no evidence for a targeted memory reactivation (TMR) effect on word-meaning priming (1/8): osf.io/preprints/ps...
In this study (specifically, Experiment 2), we investigated the causal role of sleep on WMP by promoting specific linguistic-related memories for consolidation (during sleep) via TMR (3/8).
Overall, these findings suggest a bounded role of sleep in consolidating linguistic-related, episodic memories. Sleep-maintained WMP over the longer term may therefore be underpinned by both passive and active elements of sleep (7/8).