SLEEP 2011 Abstract Supplement

A. Basic Science IX. Learning, Memory and Cognition
agreement with enhanced flow of sensory information from the visual
cortex to more frontal cortical areas. This increased posterior-to-anterior
connectivity during eyes-open no longer occurred after sleep deprivation.
In the opposite direction, anterior-to-posterior, GC was not different
between eyes-open and eyes-closed during waking after normal
sleep or sleep deprivation.
Conclusion: Sleep deprivation impairs the increased posterior-to-anterior
information flow that is normally present during eyes-open wakefulness.
This effect was limited to the posterior-to-anterior direction, which
is involved in the transfer of sensory information to the frontal cortex.
These findings suggest that SWA has a preferential directionality in its
restorative action, which is necessary to maintain the next day’s efficient
transmission of sensory information to higher order cortical areas.
Support (If Any): Funded by the Netherlands Organization of Scientific
Research (NWO) VICI Grant 453.07.001 to EvS.
0224
SLEEP IS MORE THAN REST
Nissen C, Piosczyk H, Holz J, Feige B, Voderholzer U, Riemann D
University of Freiburg Medical Center, Freiburg, Germany
Introduction: Sleep has been shown to facilitate neural and behavioral
plasticity compared to active wakefulness. However, conflicting hypotheses
propose that sleep-specific brain activity after training fosters neural
reorganization (sleep hypothesis), or alternatively, that sleep provides
a window of reduced stimulus interference passively protecting novel
memories (rest hypothesis).
Methods: One hundret thirteen healthy subjects (aged 16 to 30 yrs.)
were tested on a basic texture discrimination task in the morning and
retested in the afternoon, after a 1 hour period of daytime sleep, passive
waking with maximally reduced interference, or active waking. Changes
in texture discrimination performance have been shown to depend on
local synaptic plasticity in the primary visual cortex.
Results: Active and passive wakefulness were associated with deterioration
in performance, presumably due to synaptic over-potentiation
across within-day sessions. In contrast, sleep not only restored performance
in comparison to active waking, as has been shown previously,
but also in direct comparison to passive waking. Control experiments
excluded that the detrimental effects of wakefulness were due to stress
or fatigue. The restoration of performance across periods of sleep correlated
with electroencephalographic slow wave activity, potentially related
to synaptic downscaling
Conclusion: We conclude that sleep is more than a resting state of reduced
stimulus interference, but actively restores performance, presumably
by refining underlying synaptic plasticity.
0225
SLEEP PROMOTES CONSOLIDATION AND
GENERALIZATION OF EXTINCTION LEARNING IN
SIMULATED EXPOSURE THERAPY FOR SPIDER FEAR
Pace-Schott EF 1,2 , Bennett T 1 , Verga P 1 , Hong J 1 , Spencer R 1
1
Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
MA, USA, 2 Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Introduction: We examined sleep’s effects in a model of exposure therapy
(therapeutic extinction) for simple phobia. Given that extinction of
experimental fear conditioning generalizes over sleep, we hypothesized
that sleep would also allow extinction learning to generalize from an
extinguished phobic object to a novel one.
Methods: 32 females (age=20.1, SD=1.9) within spider-fearing ranges
on Fear of Spiders (FSQ, 101.9, SD=14.6) and Spider Phobia (SPQ,
23.9, SD=4.0) questionnaires, were pseudorandomly assigned to a Sleep
(N=14) or Wake (N=18) group. Groups did not differ in age, FSQ,
SPQ, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality or sleepiness scales. During Session 1
(“Sess1”: evening Sleep, morning Wake), participants viewed 14, 60-
sec videos of the same spider and wrote ratings (-10 to +10) for Disgust,
Fear and Unpleasantness. Session 2 (“Sess2”) occurred 12 hours later
with 6 videos of the “Old” (Sess1) spider and 6 of a “Novel” spider. A
10-msec, 83dB white noise stimulus was delivered during ~75% of videos.
Skin conductance responses (SCR) were continuously monitored.
Four 6-video “Phases” included “Exposure_1” (Sess1, videos 1-6), “Exposure_2”
(Sess1, 7-12), “Sess2_Old” (videos 1-6) and “Sess2_Novel”
(7-12). Each Phase included 4 “SCR-to-noise” stimuli.
Results: There was a significant Phase x Group interaction (p