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A daytime nap does not increase mnemonic discrimination ability.

Per Davidson1,2,3, Peter Jönsson4, Mikael Johansson1

  • 1Department of Psychology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.

Journal of Sleep Research
|June 20, 2020
PubMed
Summary

A daytime nap did not improve mnemonic discrimination (MD), the ability to distinguish similar memories. Increased sleepiness, however, was linked to poorer performance on this memory task.

Keywords:
encodingmnemonic discriminationnapspattern separationsleepsleepiness

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Sleep Research

Background:

  • Sleep is thought to prepare the brain for learning new information.
  • Sleep deprivation negatively impacts the encoding of new memories.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether a daytime nap enhances mnemonic discrimination (MD) performance.
  • To explore the relationship between napping, sleepiness, and the ability to differentiate similar memories.

Main Methods:

  • Participants completed the Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST) twice: once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
  • After the morning task, participants were assigned to either a 2-hour sleep opportunity (sleep group) or a quiet rest period (wake group).
  • MD performance was assessed by the ability to distinguish previously seen stimuli from similar, novel stimuli.

Main Results:

  • No significant improvement in mnemonic discrimination ability was observed after a daytime nap.
  • A significant correlation was found where increased sleepiness between testing sessions predicted decreased MD performance.
  • The study did not find evidence supporting naps for enhancing the ability to discriminate similar memories.

Conclusions:

  • Daytime naps may not be sufficient to enhance mnemonic discrimination.
  • Increased sleepiness appears detrimental to the ability to differentiate similar memories.
  • Further research is needed to determine the necessary sleep manipulations and memory task sensitivities for observing sleep's effects on memory encoding.