Neural Dynamics of Associative Learning during Human Sleep

Abstract

Recent evidence indicate that humans can learn entirely new information during sleep. To elucidate the neural dynamics underlying sleep-learning we investigated brain activity during auditory-olfactory discriminatory associative learning in human sleep. We found that learning-related delta and sigma neural changes are involved in early acquisition stages, when new associations are being formed. In contrast, learning-related theta activity emerged in later stages of the learning process, after tone-odour associations were already established. These findings suggest that learning new associations during sleep is signalled by a dynamic interplay between slow-waves, sigma and theta activity.