Odor Cues During Slow-Wave Sleep Prompt Declarative Memory Consolidation Rasch, B., Buchel, C., Gais, S., & Born, J. Presented by: Suiki Zhang

Introduction sleep facilitates the consolidation of newly acquired memories for long-term storage Consolidation of hippocampus-dependent memories benefits particularly from slow- wave sleep (SWS) Odours are excellent contextual retrieval cues for various types of memories

Introduction Purpose: used an odour to reactivate memories in human during sleep Hypothesis: odour-induced reactivations boosting the consolidation of hippocampus- dependent declarative memories are related to hippocampal activity during SWS

Methods 18 participants Olfactory stimulus = smell of a rose Learned a 2D object location task (locations of 15 card pairs on a computer screen) & a procedural finger-tapping task in the evening before sleep 4 different conditions

Methods

Results Re-exposure to the odour during SWS improved the retention of hippocampus- dependent memories but not of hippocampus-independent procedural memories Odour re-exposure was ineffective during REM sleep or wakefulness or when the odour had been omitted prior learning

Results

Discussion Odour cues activate the hippocampus during SWS to a much greater extent than during wakefulness Supports the theory that memory consolidation evolves from repeated reactivation of newly encoded hippocampal memory during SWS  eventually leads to transfer of the memory to cortical regions for long term storage

My Opinion Strengths: - Clear diagrams/graphs - Interesting study Weaknesses: - unorganized; no headings for sections Next steps: - Examine whether the type of the odour would have different effects

Cited Article Rasch, B., Buchel, C., Gais, S., & Born, J. (2007). Odor cues during slow-wave sleep prompt declarative memory consolidation. Science magazine, 315,

Questions?