Memory reactivation during sleep is thought to facilitate memory consolidation. Most sleep reactivation research has examined how reactivation of specific facts, objects, and associations benefits their overall retention. However, our memories are not unitary, and not all features of a memory persist in tandem over time. Instead, our memories are transformed, with some features strengthened and others weakened. Does sleep reactivation drive memory transformation? We leveraged the Targeted Memory Reactivation technique in an object category learning paradigm to examine this question. Participants (20 female, 14 male) learned three categories of novel objects, where each object had unique, distinguishing features as well as features shared with other members of its category. We used a real-time EEG protocol to cue the reactivation of these objects during sleep at moments optimized to generate reactivation events. We found that reactivation improved memory for distinguishing features while worsening memory for shared features, suggesting a differentiation process. The results indicate that sleep reactivation does not act holistically on object memories, instead supporting a transformation where some features are enhanced over others.

人们认为睡眠期间的记忆重新激活有助于记忆巩固。大多数睡眠重新激活研究都探讨了特定事实、物体和联想的重新激活如何有利于他们的整体记忆。然而，我们的记忆并不是单一的，并且并非记忆的所有特征都会随着时间的推移而持续存在。相反，我们的记忆发生了变化，一些特征被加强，另一些特征被削弱。睡眠重新激活会促进记忆转变吗？我们利用对象类别学习范例中的目标记忆重新激活技术来研究这个问题。参与者（20 名女性，14 名男性）学习了三类新奇物体，其中每个物体都有独特的、显着的特征以及与该类别的其他成员共享的特征。我们使用实时脑电图协议来提示这些物体在睡眠期间在经过优化以生成重新激活事件的时刻重新激活。我们发现，重新激活可以改善区分特征的记忆，同时恶化对共享特征的记忆，这表明存在分化过程。结果表明，睡眠重新激活并不全面地作用于物体记忆，而是支持某些特征比其他特征增强的转变。