Memory: REM Sleep Needed For Long Term Memory Formation

Parsifal

Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2015
Messages
1,081
Rapid eye movement sleep (dreaming) shown necessary for memory formation | KurzweilAI

Rapid eye movement sleep (REMS) has been linked with spatial and emotional memory consolidation. However, establishing direct causality between neural activity during REMS and memory consolidation has proven difficult because of the transient nature of REMS and significant caveats associated with REMS deprivation techniques. In mice, we optogenetically silenced medial septum γ-aminobutyric acid–releasing (MSGABA) neurons, allowing for temporally precise attenuation of the memory-associated theta rhythm during REMS without disturbing sleeping behavior. REMS-specific optogenetic silencing of MSGABA neurons selectively during a REMS critical window after learning erased subsequent novel object place recognition and impaired fear-conditioned contextual memory. Silencing MSGABA neurons for similar durations outside REMS episodes had no effect on memory. These results demonstrate that MSGABA neuronal activity specifically during REMS is required for normal memory consolidation.

So this is in line with what Ray said in his books about GABA synchronizing both hemispheres or something like that (yes, my memory sucks :p).
I also wonder if lucid dreaming is a good thing (I know a guy that has lucid dreams at almost everyone of his dreams and he also has an amazing memory, almost photographic/eidetic even if there is a debate that eidetic memory doesn't exist, still I wonder if it would help to increase performance at school).

Interestingly:

Silencing the same neurons for similar durations outside of REM episodes had no effect on memory. This indicates that neuronal activity specifically during REM sleep is required for normal memory consolidation,” says the study’s lead author, Richard Boyce, a PhD student.

So I wonder more and more how biorythms/circadian rythms work in the body and how to control/synchronize them perfectly...

It also makes me wonder how the subliminal memory works:

(Quote not from the same article) -
Who is this mysterious servant-girl ? Thanks to the Internet, I was able to trace the origin of this story to Samuel Taylor Coleridge‘s 1884 book Biographia Literaria . This is the complete story from that book:

“A case of this kind occurred in a Catholic town in Germany, a year or two before my arrival at Gottingen, and had not then ceased to be a frequent subject of conversation. A young woman of four or five and twenty, who could neither read nor write, was seized with a nervous fever; during which, according to the asseverations of all the priests and monks of the neighbourhood, she became possessed, and, as it appeared, by a very learned devil.

She continued incessantly talking Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, in very pompous tones and with most distinct enunciation. This possession was rendered more probable by the known fact, that she was or had been a heretic. Voltaire humorously advises the devil to decline all acquaintance with medical men; and it would have been more to his reputation, if he had taken this advice in the present instance. The case had attracted the particular attention of a young physician, and by his statement many eminent physiologists and psychologists visited the town, and cross-examined the case on the spot. Sheets full of her raving were taken down from her own mouth, and were found to consist of sentences, coherent and intelligible each for itself, but with little or no connection with each other. Of the Hebrew, a small portion only could be traced to the Bible; the remainder seemed to be in the Rabbinical dialect. All trick or conspiracy was out of the question. Not only had the young woman ever been a harmless, simple creature; but she was evidently labouring under a nervous fever. In the town, in which she had been resident for many years as a servant in different families, no solution presented itself. The young physician, however, determined to trace her past life step by step; for the patient herself was incapable of returning a rational answer. He at length succeeded in discovering the place where her parents had lived: travelled thither, found them dead, but an uncle surviving; and from him learnt that the patient had been charitably taken by an old protestant pastor at nine years old, and had remained with him some years, even till the old man’s death. Of this pastor the uncle knew nothing, but that he was a very good man. With great difficulty, and after much search, our young medical philosopher discovered a niece of the pastor’s, who had lived with him as his housekeeper, and had inherited his effects. She remembered the girl; related that her venerable uncle had been too indulgent, and could not bear to hear the girl scolded; that she was willing to have kept her, but that after her patron’s death, the girl herself refused to stay.

Anxious inquiries were then, of course, made concerning the pastor’s habits; and the solution of the phenomenon was soon obtained. For it appeared that it had been the old man’s custom, for years, to walk up and down a passage of his house into which the kitchen door opened, and to read to himself with a loud voice, out of his favourite books. A considerable number of these were still in the niece’s possession. She added, that he was a very learned man and a great Hebraist. Among the books were found a collection of Rabbinical writings, together with several of the Greek and Latin Fathers; and the physician succeeded in identifying so many passages with those taken down at the young woman’s bedside, that no doubt could remain in any rational mind concerning the true origin of the impressions made on her nervous system.

This authenticated case furnishes both proof and instance, that reliques of sensation may exist for an indefinite time in a latent state, in the very same order in which they were originally impressed; and as we cannot rationally suppose the feverish state of the brain to act in any other way than as a stimulus, this fact (and it would not be difficult to adduce several of the same kind) contributes to make it even probable, that all thoughts are in themselves imperishable; and, that if the intelligent faculty should be rendered more comprehensive, it would require only a different and apportioned organization, the body celestial instead of the body terrestrial, to bring before every human soul the collective experience of its whole past existence. And this, this, perchance, is the dread book of judgment, in whose mysterious hieroglyphics every idle word is recorded! Yea, in the very nature of a living spirit, it may be more possible that heaven and earth should pass away, than that a single act, a single thought, should be loosened or lost from that living chain of causes, to all whose links, conscious or unconscious, the free-will, our only absolute Self, is co-extensive and co-present.”

(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, chapter VI, pp 54-56, London: George Bell and Sons 1884)

Another example of subliminal memory can be taken from the life of the noted American psychic Edgar Cayce(1877-1945), who in his childhood spontaneously developed the ability to memorize the contents of school textbooks. His method was to read the textbook and take a short nap, after which he would wake up and recall minute details of the contents of the book. This is an excerpt from the book The Lost Memoirs of Edgar Cayce.



Subliminal memory is amazing... I wonder how it works and how some people can make it move up to consciousness.
 
Last edited:

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom