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不睡觉也能形成新记忆
当有人告诉你“睡一觉再决定”（sleep on it）时，他们通常是在建议你避免贸然行事。但是睡眠还有另一个广为人知的好处：它可以帮你记住你学到的东西。
如果现实情况是你不得不在考试前临时抱佛脚，睡觉就显得相当奢侈，但一项新的研究成果或许能宽慰到你：相比好好睡觉，大鼠在接触新事物后如果保持醒着的状态，一周后它们对这些事物的记忆有时会表现得更好。这表明在睡眠缺失的情况下也可以形成长期记忆。研究成果发表在《美国科学院院刊》（PNAS）上。
“我们知道睡眠可以促进记忆巩固。”美国图宾根大学（University of Tubingen）的玛丽昂·伊诺斯特罗萨（Marion Inostroza）说，她表示，数十年的研究表明，睡眠有助于将最近的经历变成，或者说巩固形成持久的记忆。
伊诺斯特罗萨：“但其实也有证据表明，不睡时（经历）也能巩固形成长期记忆。”所以，睡眠不足的人也是能学习到东西的。
“在这种背景下，我们开始对睡眠是否是形成长期记忆的唯一条件，是否是关键条件这一问题产生了兴趣。”图宾根大学医学心理学和行为神经生物学研究所负责人简·博恩（Jan Born）说道。对于博恩来说，基本论点就是：“我们需要睡眠来形成长期记忆吗？”
为了找出答案，研究人员让大鼠对一个新鲜物体进行探索，然后将它们转移到一个“休息笼”中，只允许其中一部分大鼠打盹，而另一部分则温柔地让它们保持清醒。伊诺斯特罗萨说：“让大鼠保持清醒的方式是：非常轻柔地敲击或者者小心翼翼地摇动它们所在的笼子。”
一周后，研究人员将两组大鼠送回测试笼子，给它们展示一周前遇到过的物体，以及一个它们以前从没见过的物体。如果大鼠记得原来见过的物体，它们在老物体周围嗅探的时间应该比新物体更少，结果显示，好好睡觉的大鼠和被迫熬夜的大鼠都是如此，也就是在这个测试中，所有的大鼠都记住了原来见过的物体。
博恩说：“但是，睡觉时和清醒时形成的记忆类型是不同的。”
伊诺斯特罗萨：“在我们的研究中，我们至少可以理出两种截然不同的记忆：一种用于识别独立于环境背景的对象，另一种则依赖于环境和空间。”也就是说，保持清醒的大鼠实际上比好好休息的大鼠对原始物体的记忆表现更好，但前提是……[查看全文]
Naps Not Needed to Make New Memories
When someone tells you to “sleep on it,” they’re usually suggesting that you avoid making rash decisions. But sleep is also widely known to help you remember things you’ve learned.
Now, a nap might seem inconvenient when you’re cramming for an exam. But don’t worry. Because a new study shows that rats who stayed awake after engaging with novel objects could remember seeing those things a week later…sometimes better than rats who slept. That suggests that long-term memories can be laid down without having to lay down. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Marion Inostroza: We know that memory consolidation is promoted by sleep.
Hopkin: Marion Inostroza of the University of Tubingen. She says that decades of studies have shown that sleep helps to transform…or consolidate…recent experiences into lasting memories.
Inostroza: However, there’s also evidence for consolidation into long term memory during wakefulness.
Hopkin: So, sleep-deprived individuals can still learn stuff.
Jan Born: And against this background, we became interested in the question whether sleep is the only condition, is the critical condition, for the formation of long term memories.
Hopkin: Jan Born directs the institute of medical psychology and behavioral neurobiology at the University of Tubingen. For Born, the bottom line is:
Born: Do we NEED sleep to form long-term memories?
Hopkin: To find out, the researchers allowed rats to investigate a novel object. The animals were then moved to a “resting cage” where some were allowed to snooze, while others were gently kept awake.
Inostroza: And we do that by very gentle knocking the cage where the animal is placed. Or by shaking very carefully the cage where the animal is located.
Hopkin: One week later, the rats are returned to the testing cage and presented with the object they’d encountered previously…as well as one they’d never seen before. Now, if the rats remember the original item, they should spend less time nosing around it than they do sniffing the new new thing. And it turns out that’s the case for both rats that rested and those that pulled all-nighters…or, all-afternooners. So, in this test, all the rats remembered the objects.
Born: However, the kind of memories formed during sleep and during wake, they differ.
Inostroza: In our study we could at least disentangle two very different kinds of memories: [Memories] on the one side, memories which are for recognition of an object independent of context and on the other hand those memories which are context and space dependent.
Hopkin: So, rats who stayed awake were actually better at remembering the original object than their fully rested counterparts–but only when...[full transcript]
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Sawangjit, A. et al. (2022) “Two distinct ways to form long-term object recognition memory during sleep and wakefulness,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(34).
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