No difference between slow oscillation up‐ and down‐state cueing for memory consolidation during sleep

Summary The beneficial effects of sleep for memory consolidation are assumed to rely on the reactivation of memories in conjunction with the coordinated interplay of sleep rhythms like slow oscillations and spindles. Specifically, slow oscillations are assumed to provide the temporal frame for spindles to occur in the slow oscillations up‐states, enabling a redistribution of reactivated information within hippocampal–neocortical networks for long‐term storage. Memory reactivation can also be triggered externally by presenting learning‐associated cues (like odours or sounds) during sleep, but it is presently unclear whether there is an optimal time‐window for the presentation of such cues in relation to the phase of the slow oscillations. In the present within‐subject comparison, participants ( n  = 16) learnt word‐pairs visually presented with auditory cues of the first syllable. These syllables were subsequently used for real‐time cueing either in the up‐ or down‐state of endogenous slow oscillations. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found differences in memory performance neither between up‐ and down‐state cueing, nor between word‐pairs that were cued versus uncued. In the up‐state cueing condition, higher amounts of rapid eye movement sleep were associated with better memory for cued contents, whereas higher amounts of slow‐wave sleep were associated with better memory for uncued contents. Evoked response analyses revealed signs of cue processing in both conditions. Interestingly, both up‐ and down‐state cueing evoked a similar spindle response with the induced slow oscillations up‐state at ~1000 ms post‐cue. We speculate that our cueing procedure triggered generalised reactivation processes that facilitated the consolidation of both cued and uncued memories irrespective of the slow oscillation phase.