The role of sleep in false memory formation - PubMed (original) (raw)

Randomized Controlled Trial

The role of sleep in false memory formation

Jessica D Payne et al. Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2009 Oct.

Abstract

Memories are not stored as exact copies of our experiences. As a result, remembering is subject not only to memory failure, but to inaccuracies and distortions as well. Although such distortions are often retained or even enhanced over time, sleep's contribution to the development of false memories is unknown. Here, we report that a night of sleep increases both veridical and false recall in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, compared to an equivalent period of daytime wakefulness. But while veridical memory deteriorates across both wake and sleep, false memories are preferentially preserved by sleep, actually showing a non-significant improvement. The same selectivity of false over veridical memories was observed in a follow-up nap study. Unlike previous studies implicating deep, slow-wave sleep (SWS) in declarative memory consolidation, here veridical recall correlated with decreased SWS, a finding that was observed in both the overnight and nap studies. These findings lead to two counterintuitive conclusions - that under certain circumstances sleep can promote false memories over veridical ones, and SWS can be associated with impairment rather than facilitation of declarative memory consolidation. While these effects produce memories that are less accurate after sleep, these memories may, in the end, be more useful.

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Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Sleep increases both veridical and false recall. Results represent combined performance in both college populations (see Supplementary Information for individual college statistics). (A) Increased recall of studied words (overall and corrected recall); (B) increased recall of critical words (strongly semantically associated, but unstudied words). Note that sleep did not increase false recall of words other than the critical word (intrusions). Error bars = s.e.m. *** P<.001; ** P<.01.

Figure 2

Figure 2

Change in recall performance across 12 hours, relative to the 20min baseline, in the Wake and Sleep groups. Values have been converted to percents to equate recall of studied words (out of 96 possible words) and critical words (out of 8 possible words). While veridical recall of studied words deteriorated significantly from baseline in both the Wake and Sleep groups, false recall of critical words deteriorated from baseline only in the Wake group. False recall in the Sleep group non-significantly increased from baseline. Error bars = s.e.m. *** P<.001; * P < .05.

Figure 3

Figure 3

Negative correlation between overall recall and SWS. (A) Correlation between overall recall and total minutes spent in SWS, r = −0.47, _P_=0.03; (B) Correlation between overall recall and percent of total sleep time spent in SWS, r = −0.55, _P_=0.009. See Supp Fig. S2 for corrected recall correlations.

Figure 4

Figure 4

An afternoon nap selectively increases false recall. (A) equivalent recall of studied words in the Nap and Wake groups (overall and corrected recall); (B) increased recall of semantically associated, but unstudied words (critical words) in the nap group. Error bars = s.e.m. * _P_=.02

Figure 5

Figure 5

Negative correlation between overall recall and total minutes spent in SWS in the nap study, r = −0.54, _P_=0.037 (Experiment 3).

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