Sleep enhances knowledge of routes and regions in spatial environments

  1. Jan Born1
  1. 1Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology, University Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
  2. 2Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
  3. 3Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, University Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
  1. Corresponding author: hannes.noack{at}uni-tuebingen.de

Abstract

Sleep is thought to preferentially consolidate hippocampus-dependent memory, and as such, spatial navigation. Here, we investigated the effects of sleep on route knowledge and explicit and implicit semantic regions in a virtual environment. Sleep, compared with wakefulness, improved route knowledge and also enhanced awareness of the semantic regionalization within the environment, whereas signs of implicit regionalization remained unchanged. Results support the view that sleep specifically enhances explicit aspects of memory, also in the spatial domain. Enhanced region knowledge after sleep suggests that consolidation during sleep goes along with the formation of more abstract schema-like representations.

Footnotes

  • Received September 9, 2016.
  • Accepted December 21, 2016.

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