Sleep selectively and durably enhances real-world sequence memory
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Sleep is thought to play a critical role in the retention of episodic memories. Yet it remains unclear whether and how sleep actively transforms memory for specific experiences. More generally, little is known about sleep’s effects on memory for multidimensional real-world experiences, both overnight and in the days to months that follow. In an exception to the law of forgetting, we showed that sleep actively and selectively improves retrieval of a one-time real-world experience (a controlled but immersive art tour) – specifically boosting memory for the order of tour items (sequential associations), but not perceptual details from the tour (featural associations). This above-baseline increase in sequence memory was not evident after a matched period of wakefulness. Moreover, the sleep-induced advantage of sequence over featural memory grew over time up to one-year post-encoding. Finally, overnight polysomnography showed that sleep-related memory enhancement was associated with the duration and neurophysiological hallmarks of slow-wave sleep previously linked to neural replay, particularly spindle-slow wave coupling. These results suggest that sleep serves a crucial and selective role in enhancing sequential organization in episodic memory at the expense of specific details, linking sleep-related neural mechanisms to the transformation and enhancement of memory for complex real-life experiences. Significance Statement Sleep affects the retention of episodic memories. Yet, it remains unclear whether sleep active transforms how we remember past experiences, overnight and beyond. We investigated memory for different dimensions underlying a dynamic real-world event – sequential associations versus atemporal featural associations – before and after sleep or wakefulness, and serially up to a year later. Sleep actively and selectively enhanced sequence memory, with this preferential sequence retention growing with time. Overnight memory enhancement is associated with the duration and neurophysiological hallmarks of slow-wave sleep previously linked to sequential neural replay, particularly spindle-slow wave coupling. Our findings support an active role for sleep in transforming different aspects of real-world memory, with sequence structure coming to dominate long-term memory for dynamic real-world experiences.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".