Biology subjects

Rauss, K.

Publications and source records attributed to Rauss, K..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Sleep enhances spatial schema memory formation in humans

Schema memory, a generalized representation formed across episodes sharing regularities, is thought to arise through sleep-dependent systems consolidation. Yet, direct evidence in humans remains sparse. Here, sixty young adults navigated a virtual-reality arena and learned a spatial distribution of object-category ratios across five sessions (toys vs. household items, hidden in boxes at different locations). Participants then either slept or were sleep-deprived for a full night, followed by two recovery nights before memory testing, or they were tested after a short 30-min delay spent awake. Only after a three-day delay did spatial memory of old box locations predict spatial interpolation to new box locations, indicating time-dependent schema expression. Critically, sleep distinctly enhanced spatial integration beyond the effect of time. This benefit was predicted by frontal cortical slow oscillation-spindle coupling during the first post-encoding night, thus linking sleep oscillations to the transformation of episodic spatial memories into integrated schema representations.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Wake consolidates event memory, sleep binds it with context

Sleep is thought to be superior to wakefulness in consolidating memory, due to a hippocampus-driven process enhancing the contextual integration of events. We compared recall of associative memory in different contexts, and found that memory is also consolidated during wakefulness, although in a qualitatively distinct way. Healthy participants performed a cued stimulus-response (S-R) learning task requiring speeded object classification. Learning was followed by 2 hours of sleep or wakefulness. Reaction times revealed stronger S-R memory after sleep than wakefulness with retrieval in the same context, and this benefit was linked to increased sleep spindle activity. In contrast, S-R memory was stronger after wakefulness than sleep when tested in a different context. This wake-dependent enhancement had a fast onset and was reversed by delayed sleep. We conclude that, unlike sleep strengthening the binding of an event with its context, wakefulness stabilizes event representations itself, i.e., not bound to a specific context.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Binocular disparity-based learning does not generalize to the other visual hemifield

Visual perceptual learning refers to long-lasting performance improvements on a visual skill, an ability presumably supported by plastic changes in early visual brain areas. Visual perceptual learning has been shown to be induced by training and to benefit from consolidation during sleep, presumably via the reactivation of learning-associated neuronal firing patterns. However, previous studies have almost exclusively relied on a single paradigm, the texture discrimination task, on which performance improvements may not rely on strictly perceptual skills. Here, we tested whether sleep has beneficial effects on a visual disparity discrimination task. We confirm previous findings in showing that the ability to discriminate different disparities is unaffected by sleep during a 12-hour retention period after training. Importantly, we extend these results by providing evidence against an effect of sleep on the generalization of improved disparity discrimination across the vertical meridian. We further rule out carry-over effects as a possible confound in our earlier within-subject study by relying on a between-subject design. The combined data from both studies argue against sleep as an important factor in the consolidation of a strictly perceptual skill. This sets important constraints on models of the role of sleep and sleep-associated neural reactivation in the consolidation of non-declarative memories.

neuroscience↗