PMID-18836440[0] Pharmacological REM sleep suppression paradoxically improves rather than impairs skill memory
- surpressed REM sleep with SSRIs or norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor
- yet tested the subjects after a long wash-out: 32 hours, including 2 nights sleep.
- did not impair word-pair recognition, and improved finger tapping accuracy.
- sleep spindles are a feature of non-REM sleep.
- REM sleep is characterized by an abscence of serotonin and norepinephrine; SSRIs and SNRIs increase the levels of these two neurotransmitters, respectively, at the synaptic cleft.
- clinical studies of depressed patients show no impairment of skill performance during long-term treatment with these drugs, despite marked REM supression
- did mirror-tracing and finger-tapping tasks.
- SSRI supressed REM sleep; SNRI almost completely removed REM.
- treatment increased accuracy of finger tapping task! esp. for the SNRI.
- increase in accuracy was positively correlated to the change in spindle density.
- For the mirror task, there were notable improvements after sleep, but no significant difference between placebo, SSRI, and SNRI groups.
- paired-word retention task has been shown dependent on SWS; it was not affected by pharmacology.
- They suggest that perhaps SSRI /SNRI supressed simply the typical measures of REM sleep, and that other factors critical for the associated consolidation were unaffected (e.g. high cholinergic activity).
- result is consistent with [1]
____References____
[0] Rasch B, Pommer J, Diekelmann S, Born J, Pharmacological REM sleep suppression paradoxically improves rather than impairs skill memory.Nat Neurosci no Volume
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(2008 Oct 5) |
[1] Tamaki M, Matsuoka T, Nittono H, Hori T, Fast sleep spindle (13-15 hz) activity correlates with sleep-dependent improvement in visuomotor performance.Sleep 31:2, 204-11 (2008 Feb 1) |
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