NCT04702750

Reactivating Specific Memories During Sleep in Conjunction with a Suppression Context

Completed NA Last updated 19 November 2024

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Targeted memory reactivation (odors) in Sleep in 23 participants. Completed in 30 May 2024.

Timeline

10 February 2022

Primary endpoint
30 May 2024

30 May 2024

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Northwestern University
Phase	NA
Status	Completed
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	na
Design	single group
Masking	none
Primary purpose	basic science
Enrollment	23
Start date	10 February 2022
Primary completion	30 May 2024
Estimated completion	30 May 2024
Sites	1 location across United States

Drugs / interventions tested

• Targeted memory reactivation (odors)
• Targeted memory reactivation (sounds)

Conditions studied

• Sleep — all drugs for Sleep →
• Consolidation — all drugs for Consolidation →

Sponsor

Northwestern University

Who can join

Adults 18 to 35, any sex, with Sleep or Consolidation. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Forgetting is often perceived as the inability to retain information, but in fact at least some memory deterioration is due to active suppression processes, that are behaviorally adaptive. These active processes are thought to involve new, inhibitory learning, suggesting that sleep may serve to enhance them as it does other forms of learning. If this were the case, sleep may be harnessed to weaken non-adaptive memories in a manner that may be beneficial for healthy and clinical populations suffering from memory-related symptoms of disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To test this idea, this suggested nap study will incorporate specific memories in a suppression context during sleep monitored by encephalography (EEG). First, participants will take part in an item-based directed forgetting task, in which they will be exposed to different words, immediately followed by instructions to either remember the preceding word or not. The instructions will be conveyed using two distinct odors. In fact, the purpose of this first part would be to cement the associations of these odors with the instructions. Next, in an unrelated task, participants will learn the spatial locations of images on a screen. These images will be presented along with congruent sounds (e.g., cat - meow). During a subsequent nap, some of these sounds will be unobtrusively presented along with one of the two previously learned odors or along with a novel odor. In a final spatial-location test, memory for the images whose sounds were presented along with the "forget" odor during sleep is expected to be worse than for the images that were not cued. Memory for the locations of the images whose sounds were presented with one of the two other odors during sleep are expected to improve, possibly more so for the sounds presented with the "remember" odor relative to those presented with the novel odor. If successful, these results would be a first step towards interventions that may serve to selectively weaken memory during sleep.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial. Completed trials usually publish results within 12-18 months.