NICT-IFReC Joint Seminar

December 13, 2019
16:00-17:00
CiNet 1F Conference Room

Yuka Sasaki
Professor
Brown University

Hosts:
Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), National Institute of Infromraiton and Neural Networks (NICT)
Osaka University Immunology Frontier Research Center (IFReC)

Abstract:
Sleep is beneficial for learning. However, whether NREM or REM sleep facilitates learning, whether the learning facilitation results from plasticity increases or stabilization and whether the facilitation results from learning-specific processing are all controversial. Here, after training on a visual task we measured the excitatory and inhibitory neurochemical (E/I) balance, an index of plasticity measured by magnetic resonance spectroscopy in human visual areas, for the first time, while subjects slept. Off-line performance gains of presleep learning were associated with the E/I balance increase during NREM sleep, which also occurred without presleep training. In contrast, increased stabilization was associated with decreased E/I balance during REM sleep only after presleep training. These indicate that the above-mentioned issues are not matters of controversy but reflect opposite neurochemical processing for different roles in learning during different sleep stages: NREM sleep increases plasticity leading to performance gains independently of learning, while REM sleep decreases plasticity to stabilize learning in a learning-specific manner.