Sleep to forget? Apparently not, when it comes to negatively charged memories you’re actively trying to suppress. New research found that negative associations were easier to recall after a good night’s sleep, even if the individual has been actively trying to suppress those memories. In the study, subjects were given memory suppression tasks which involved emotionally charged associations between pairs of images. After two nights of reported good sleep, the subjects’ brain activity in areas thought to be involved in memory shifted from the hippocampus to the cortex, which could be the reason for easy recall of negative memories. It’s worth noting that all of the study participants were male college students, which makes the results more difficult to generalize.
Authors:
Yunzhe Liu, Wanjun Lin, Chao Liu, Yuejia Luo, Jianhui Wu, Peter J. Bayley & Shaozheng Qin
Corresponding author:
Yunzhe Liu, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Original paper published in Nature Communications on November 29, 2016.
