Sleep: Learning and Memory

Center for Translational Neuroscience

Distinguished Speaker Series

Rayford Auditorium, Biomed II Bldg.

“Sleep: Learning and Memory”

Subimal Datta, Ph.D.Director,

Laboratory of Sleep and Cognitive NeuroscienceProfessor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience

Boston University School of MedicineBoston, MA

Tuesday, October 28, 12 noon

Over the last four decades, an impressive number of studies have shown that sleep confers a beneficial effect on learning and memory. There is now strong evidence in both humans and animals to support the hypothesis that separate sleep states are differentially involved in different steps of memory consolidation. Research on the mechanisms of sleep regulation has elucidated how neurochemical and molecular activities of our brain are tightly regulated by the different states of sleep. Current multidisciplinary research, from molecular to behavioral, has begun to reveal the mechanism of sleep-dependent memory processing. This lecture will provide some critical new evidence to reconcile the correlative and causal relationship between sleep stages and memory processing.