The formation and storage of memories is a field of study that is always being improved upon due to the many factors that can affect memory consolidation. Memories have a very strong impact on us and can cause us to feel pleasure or intense negative emotions, as seen in PTSD. Better understanding memory can help improve many aspects of our life as well as quality of life. Research has been done that explores how odor can influence memory, specifically fear memories that are seen in PTSD. Research has also been done that explains how dreaming after a memory based task can improve memory consolidation for that task.
In the article “Dreaming of a learning task is associated with enhanced memory consolidation: Replication in an overnight sleep study” Erin J. Wamsley and Robert Stickgold examined how the performance on a memory task changes after that task was dreamt about. In order to do this, they conducted an overnight sleep study consisting of 39 healthy college students that had no previous background of mental health issues. Before they went to sleep, the participants were trained to complete a virtual maze task. In the maze, the participants had a 5 minute exploration period where they could virtually explore the maze, afterwards there were 3 trials that placed them in random places in the maze and they had to find the exit as quickly as possible. The participants were made aware that the faster they completed the task, the greater their monetary prize would be, this incentivized them to actually complete the task to their true ability. They then went to sleep and were monitored by EEG. As soon as the participants woke up, they were asked what they dreamt about. Finally, they then repeated the virtual maze task. There was also a control group that completed the first VMT, took a short break and took the VMT again, with no sleep or dreaming in between.
The results revealed that the people who dreamt about the task before encountering it again performed better the second time than the individuals who did not. This shows that dreaming about a task can improve memory consolidation in its skillset. It can be hypothesized that the dreams reflected the neural repetition activity of the maze task which then led to improved performance. This also raises the fascinating point that a person can improve on a task without exhibiting any cognitive effort towards it. This brings up multiple interesting points that relate repeat learning, memory consolidation and skill improvement together. These results clearly indicate that there can be future implications between improving memory and dreaming. But it also gives the possible implication these results can help individuals with mental health issues. If individuals are able to improve on a maze task, then someone with social anxiety has the potential to complete a speaking task and improve on that. This article as well as other research has the possibility to make a big impact on the field of behavioral health.
Research conducted by Grella et al. in the paper “Odor modulates the temporal dynamics of fear memory consolidation” explores how fear memories differ in memory reconsolidation depending on if they are associated with an odor or not. They hypothesized that if a fearful memory was paired with an odor at the time of encoding, the memory is delayed in the de-contextualization process that occurs with time. This is of significance to individuals with PTSD because something as subtle as a smell can vividly recall strong and negative emotions. This article relates back to the paper written by Wamsley and Stickgold because they both explore different topics that have an influence on memory consolidation. One article finds dreaming improves memory consolidation and the other article does the same with odor tagged memories, but both of the findings in these articles can work together and have implications to help those with mental health issues. For example, a new study can be based on these two works that explores how olfactory stimuli and dreaming after a positive emotion task work together to improve mood for individuals with mental illnesses. This can positively impact people with depression, PTSD and other conditions as well. Mental illness impacts millions of people worldwide and memory research brings us one step closer to improving the quality of life for these individuals.
References
Grella, S. L., Fortin, A. H., McKissick, O., Leblanc, H., & Ramirez, S. (2020). Odor modulates the temporal dynamics of fear memory consolidation. Learning & Memory, 27(4), 150–163. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.050690.119
Wamsley, E. J., & Stickgold, R. (2019). Dreaming of a learning task is associated with enhanced memory consolidation: Replication in an overnight sleep study. Journal of Sleep Research, 28(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.12749
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