Sleep supports memory consolidation as shown in mammals and invertebrates such as bees and "Drosophila." Here, we show that sleep's memory function is preserved in "Aplysia californica" with an even simpler nervous system. Animals performed on an inhibitory conditioning task ("learning that a food is inedible") three…

Abilities to encode and remember events in their spatiotemporal context (episodic memory) rely on brain regions that mature late during childhood and are supported by sleep. We compared the temporal dynamics of episodic memory formation and the role of sleep in this process between 62 children (8-12 years) and 57 adults (18-37 years). Subjects…

Sleep is known to promote the consolidation of motor memories. In everyday life, typically more than 1 isolated motor skill is acquired at a time, and this possibly gives rise to interference during consolidation. Here, it is shown that reward expectancy determines the amount of sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Subjects were trained on 2…

Sleep architecture as well as memory function are strongly age dependent. Slow wave sleep (SWS), in particular, decreases dramatically with increasing age, starting already beyond the age of 30. SWS normally predominates during early nocturnal sleep and is implicated in declarative memory consolidation. However, the consequences of changes in…