EDITORIAL

http://dx.doi.org/10.5665/sleep.2696

Two Independent Sources of Short Term Memory Problems during Sleep

Deprivation
Commentary on Wee et al. Sleep deprivation accelerates delay-related loss of visual short-term memories without affecting precision. SLEEP
2013;36:849-856.
Adrienne M. Tucker, PhD
Research Institute Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Accidents related to sleep loss are estimated to cost billions of The model parameter reflecting random guesses increased as
dollars annually,1 yet the effects of sleep deprivation on aspects a function of sleep deprivation and delay, which suggests that
of cognition have yet to be unraveled. For example, short term participants were more likely to drop items from STM during
memory (STM) plays a vital role in the performance of a wide sleep loss (i.e., that participants had a harder time maintain-
range of tasks such as decision making and problem solving.2 ing items in STM). Intriguingly, two studies using a paramet-
During sleep loss, STM performance is slower and less accurate ric approach have also reported selective deficits in working
with large individual differences in the magnitude of impair- memory maintenance in sleep deprivation, as well as one other
ment,3-8 yet the underlying mechanism(s) for these performance model-based analysis described further below.12-14 In this issue
changes are not clear. of SLEEP, Wee et al. also observed that sleep deprived subjects
In this issue of SLEEP, Wee and colleagues9 take a model- were more likely to erroneously report a non-target item.9 Sleep
based approach to understanding cognitive performance by fit- deprivation did not affect the model parameter reflecting the
ting quantitative mathematical parameters which are theorized precision of remembered items, however, which suggests that
to reflect latent cognitive processes. Theoretically, this approach encoding quality is not impacted for those items that are suc-
allows one to disentangle the multitude cognitive processes cessfully maintained.
contributing to a single behavioral output variable such as reac-
tion time (RT) or accuracy.10 Another way to isolate cognitive Memory Encoding
processes is via parametric manipulations, which place increas- Rakitin et al. investigated the effects of 48-h sleep depriva-
ingly greater difficulty on a given process of interest (such as a tion on a letter recognition task where the difficulty of encoding
requirement to remember 1, 3, or 6 letters).11 These approaches the probe was manipulated by randomly scrambling 0%, 25%,
allow more specific conclusions to be drawn and can help pin- or 50% of the image’s pixels.15 Contrary to prediction, there
point which of the following processes underlie the STM defi- was no interaction between sleep deprivation and degradation.
cits seen during sleep deprivation: memory encoding, memory In line with the result reported by Wee et al.,9 this suggests that
maintenance, memory retrieval and/or a more general deficit stimulus encoding is not primarily responsible for the working
in basic perceptual and attentional processing. Below I sum- memory deficits seen.
marize what is known about the effects of sleep deprivation on
these specific processes from the study by Wee and colleagues,9 Memory Retrieval
as well as previous approaches involving cognitive modeling, In other studies, the difficulty of memory retrieval was
parametric task manipulation, and neuroimaging. manipulated by using memory set sizes of one, three, or six
letters. After two nights of sleep loss there was no interaction
Memory Maintenance between sleep deprivation and memory set size on either RT
Wee et al. tested 19 healthy young participants twice in a or accuracy, suggesting that working memory retrieval was
counterbalanced order, once after sleep and once after a night not impaired.16 Another study used a similar task, also after
of sleep deprivation. Three colored squares were presented and two nights of sleep loss. In this task the memory probes were
at a delay of either 1 or 10 s subjects were cued to retrieve manipulated such that 50% that were not in the current set
the square presented at the identified location by selecting the were in the set previous; this recency places an additional
matching color from a wheel including 180 choices. Bayes’ proactive interference demand on retrieval. Again, there were
probabilistic model was used to separate the response error dis- no interactions between sleep deprivation and set size nor be-
tribution into three parts: one representing precision of target tween sleep deprivation and recency, providing even stronger
items, one representing distractor items, and one representing evidence that memory retrieval is not greatly impacted by
random guesses. sleep loss.17

Basic Perceptual and Attention Processing

Submitted for publication April, 2013 Converging evidence suggests that decrements in basic per-
Accepted for publication April, 2013 ceptual and attention processing contribute to STM impairment
Address correspondence to: Adrienne Tucker, PhD, University of Amster- during sleep deprivation. First, sleep-deprived subjects show
dam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 129, Rm DS.18, 1018 WS Amsterdam, The failures to respond on STM tasks similar to the attentional laps-
Netherlands; Tel: +31 (0)20 525 6376; E-mail: A.M.Tucker@uva.nl es seen in the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT).18-23 Second,
SLEEP, Vol. 36, No. 6, 2013 815 Editorial—Tucker
more complex STM tasks which are more attentionally engag- CITATION
ing—and thus put lesser demands on endogenous attentional Tucker AM. Two independent sources of short term memory
control—are better preserved during sleep loss.24,25 Third, sleep problems during sleep deprivation. SLEEP 2013;36(6):815-817.
deprived participants have a harder time maintaining attention in
the face of distracting items presented during working memory DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
tasks.26,27 Finally, some brain regions (e.g., occipital and parietal The authors have indicated no financial conflicts of interest.
cortex) identified in neuroimaging studies implicate deficits in
basic perceptual and attentional processing.7,28-32 Notably, af- REFERENCES
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