Forgetting unwanted memories in sleep

What we remember and forget lies at the core of who we are. But how do our brains shape our memories of the past?

Sleep promotes the flexible use of memory by reactivating and thereby strengthening information that is most relevant to our future needs.

Whether memory reactivation in sleep also weakens unwanted components of prior experience is unknown, but represents a major gap in our understanding of memory and how sleep influences our autobiographical identities.

SLEEPAWAY combines an innovative technique for manipulating lab-based and real-world memories with an unprecedented array of neuroimaging methodologies to test the novel hypothesis that memory reactivation during sleep weakens unwanted memories in service of adaptive forgetting.

Using magnetoencephalography with optically pumped magnetometers (OPM-MEG), I will first determine whether reactivating a target memory in slow-wave sleep weakens unwanted memories from the same experience, making them less accessible.

Second, I will bring together OPM-MEG, fMRI and immersive virtual reality to obtain the first anatomically localised evidence of emotional memory reactivation in human rapid eye movement sleep, closing an important translational gap with extant animal models.

Third, I will employ fMRI and EEG to examine the intriguing possibility that memory reactivation in sleep facilitates emotion regulation by weakening negative interpretations of real-world events, fostering a concrete pathway towards clinical intervention.

Finally, to advance understanding of the symbiotic relationship between endogenous memory operations in the waking and sleeping brain, I will use OPM-MEG to test the prediction that active forgetting during wakefulness inhibits spontaneous memory reactivation in later sleep.

In sum, SLEEPAWAY will make a substantial novel theoretical contribution by delineating the basic mechanisms through which our brains eradicate unwanted details of the past to support our cognitive and emotional goals.