Recollecting painful or traumatic experiences can be deeply troubling. Sleep may offer an opportunity to reduce such suffering. We developed a procedure to weaken older aversive memories by reactivating newer positive memories during sleep. Participants viewed 48 nonsense words each paired with a unique aversive image, followed by an overnight sleep. In the next evening, participants learned associations between half of the words and additional positive images, creating interference. During the following non-rapid-eye-movement sleep, auditory memory cues were unobtrusively delivered. Upon waking, presenting cues associated with both aversive and positive images during sleep, as opposed to not presenting cues, weakened aversive memory recall while increasing positive memory intrusions. Substantiating these memory benefits, computational modeling revealed that cueing facilitated evidence accumulation toward positive affect judgments. Moreover, cue-elicited theta brain rhythms during sleep predominantly predicted the recall of positive memories. A noninvasive sleep intervention can thus modify aversive recollection and affective responses.

中文翻译：

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在人类睡眠期间，通过重新激活积极的干扰记忆，可以削弱厌恶记忆


回忆痛苦或创伤性的经历可能会令人深感不安。睡眠可能提供减少此类痛苦的机会。我们开发了一种程序，通过在睡眠期间重新激活新的积极记忆来削弱旧的厌恶记忆。参与者观看了 48 个无意义的单词，每个单词都搭配了一个独特的令人厌恶的图像，然后睡了一整夜。第二天晚上，参与者学习了一半单词和其他积极图像之间的关联，从而产生了干扰。在接下来的非快速眼动睡眠期间，听觉记忆线索被悄悄传递。醒来后，在睡眠期间呈现与厌恶和积极图像相关的线索，而不是不呈现线索，会削弱厌恶记忆的回忆，同时增加积极记忆的侵入。计算模型证实了这些记忆益处，表明提示促进了证据积累，以实现积极的情感判断。此外，睡眠期间线索引发的θ脑节律主要预测积极记忆的回忆。因此，无创睡眠干预可以改变厌恶记忆和情感反应。