Acoustic stimulation during slow wave sleep shows delayed effects on memory performance in older adults

Abstract

In young healthy adults, phase-locked acoustic stimulation (PLAS) during slow wave sleep (SWS) can boost over-night episodic memory consolidation. In older adults, evidence is scarce and available results are inconsistent, pointing toward reduced PLAS-effectiveness. We argue that multiple stimulation nights are required for effects to unfold in older individuals to compensate for age-related reductions in both SWS and memory performance. We test this assumption in a longitudinal within-subject design.In a larger previous project, older adults participated in a three-night intervention receiving either real-PLAS (STIM group) or sham-PLAS (SHAM group). Encoding and immediate recall of face-occupation pairs was administered on the evening of the first intervention night (session one), with feedback-based retrievals ensuing on all following mornings and evenings across the intervention. To test for the benefit of the real-PLAS over sham-PLAS intervention within participants, 16 older adults [agemean: 68.9 (SD: 3.7)] were re-invited receiving the real-PLAS intervention exclusively. This resulted in a SHAMSTIM group (n = 9; T1: sham-PLAS intervention, T2: real-PLAS intervention) and a STIMSTIM group (n = 7; T1 and T2: real-PLAS intervention).While the STIMSTIM group exhibited highly similar responses during T1 and T2, the SHAMSTIM group exhibited a significantly higher increase in memory performance at T2 (real-PLAS) compared to T1 (sham-PLAS). These gains can be attributed to the late stages of the experiment, after three nights of real-PLAS, and remained stable when correcting for changes in baseline sleep quality (PSQI) and baseline cognitive ability (Montreal Cognitive Assessment) between T1 and T2.We show that in older adults, PLAS-induced memory effects are delayed and manifest over the course of a three-night-PLAS intervention. Our results might explain the lack of effects in previous PLAS studies, where memory performance was solely assessed after a single night of PLAS.