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Learning and memory

To sleep, perchance to forget

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 14, page 737 (2013)Cite this article

Subjects

In one study, Hauner et al. repeatedly showed human subjects two different face images (conditioned stimuli (CS+)), which were accompanied by delivery of either one odour (the target odour) or another (non-target) odour. Both target and non-target CS+ were paired with a mild shock on 50% of the trials to induce fear memories for the face image–odour combinations.

Immediately after the conditioning phase, subjects' skin conductance responses (SCRs) to the CS+ were higher than SCRs to images that had not been paired with a shock (CS–). In addition, exposure to CS+ increased functional MRI (fMRI) activation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), hippocampus and amygdala — areas that have a role in olfactory and contextual conditioning.

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References

  1. Hauner, K. K. et al. Stimulus-specific enhancement of fear extinction during slow-wave sleep. Nature Neurosci. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn.3527 (2013)

  2. Rolls, A. et al. Sleep to forget: interference of fear memories during sleep. Mol. Psychiatry http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/mp.2013.121 (2013)

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Authors
  1. Leonie Welberg
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Welberg, L. To sleep, perchance to forget. Nat Rev Neurosci 14, 737 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3626

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