Novel object presentation affects sleep-wake behavior in rats

Sleep is suggested to be crucial for the processing and storage of new information. Several learning tasks have been shown to increase the amount of rapid eye movement sleep (REMS) with its typical theta activity (6-8 Hz) relative to total sleep time. Vice versa, REMS deprivation is able to affect m...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuroscience letters 2002-08, Vol.328 (1), p.41-44
Main Authors: SCHIFFELHOLZ, Thomas, ALDENHOFF, Josef B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Action Potentials - physiology
Animals
Attention - physiology
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Biological Clocks - physiology
Brain - physiology
Cortical Synchronization
Electrophysiology
Exploratory Behavior - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hippocampus - physiology
Learning - physiology
Male
Memory - physiology
Nerve Net - physiology
Neural Pathways - physiology
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Photic Stimulation
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Rats
Rats, Wistar
Sleep - physiology
Sleep, REM - physiology
Wakefulness - physiology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Sleep is suggested to be crucial for the processing and storage of new information. Several learning tasks have been shown to increase the amount of rapid eye movement sleep (REMS) with its typical theta activity (6-8 Hz) relative to total sleep time. Vice versa, REMS deprivation is able to affect memory consolidation following some, but not all learning tasks. Furthermore, recent studies have shown an increase of spindle activity (12-15 Hz) within the electroencephalogram (EEG) of nonREMS as well. The enhancement of both spindle and theta activity is suggested to serve as background activity for the synchronization of those neuronal pathways that were involved in the registration and, later on, participate in the long-term storage of new information in defined brain regions. In the present study, the presentation of a novel object to rats enhanced the amount of preREMS, an intermediate sleep stage with high spindle activity, within the first 2 h of the subsequent sleeping phase. Four hours later, the amount of REMS was increased as well. However, there were no changes in the EEG power spectra of nonREMS, preREMS and REMS. We therefore hypothesize that the increase of preREMS and REMS amounts and the related spindle and theta activity stand for the processing and storage of new information about the presented novel objects.
ISSN:0304-3940
1872-7972
DOI:10.1016/s0304-3940(02)00452-4