Boosting slow oscillations during sleep potentiates memory

There is compelling evidence that sleep contributes to the long-term consolidation of new memories. This function of sleep has been linked to slow (<1 Hz) potential oscillations, which predominantly arise from the prefrontal neocortex and characterize slow wave sleep. However, oscillations in brain potentials are commonly considered to be mere epiphenomena that reflect synchronized activity arising from neuronal networks, which links the membrane and synaptic processes of these neurons in time. Whether brain potentials and their extracellular equivalent have any physiological meaning per se is unclear, but can easily be investigated by inducing the extracellular oscillating potential fields of interest. Here we show that inducing slow oscillation-like potential fields by transcranial application of oscillating potentials (0.75 Hz) during early nocturnal non-rapid-eye-movement sleep, that is, a period of emerging slow wave sleep, enhances the retention of hippocampus-dependent declarative memories in healthy humans. The slowly oscillating potential stimulation induced an immediate increase in slow wave sleep, endogenous cortical slow oscillations and slow spindle activity in the frontal cortex. Brain stimulation with oscillations at 5 Hz--another frequency band that normally predominates during rapid-eye-movement sleep--decreased slow oscillations and left declarative memory unchanged. Our findings indicate that endogenous slow potential oscillations have a causal role in the sleep-associated consolidation of memory, and that this role is enhanced by field effects in cortical extracellular space.     

Consolidation during sleep of perceptual learning of spoken language

Memory consolidation resulting from sleep has been seen broadly: in verbal list learning, spatial learning, and skill acquisition in visual and motor tasks. These tasks do not generalize across spatial locations or motor sequences, or to different stimuli in the same location. Although episodic rote learning constitutes a large part of any organism's learning, generalization is a hallmark of adaptive behaviour. In speech, the same phoneme often has different acoustic patterns depending on context. Training on a small set of words improves performance on novel words using the same phonemes but with different acoustic patterns, demonstrating perceptual generalization. Here we show a role of sleep in the consolidation of a naturalistic spoken-language learning task that produces generalization of phonological categories across different acoustic patterns. Recognition performance immediately after training showed a significant improvement that subsequently degraded over the span of a day's retention interval, but completely recovered following sleep. Thus, sleep facilitates the recovery and subsequent retention of material learned opportunistically at any time throughout the day. Performance recovery indicates that representations and mappings associated with generalization are refined and stabilized during sleep.     

Expression of neurofilament gene in spinal motoneurons during neural regeneration

The techniquein situ hybridization was used to measure the levels of light (NF-L), medium (NF-M) and heavy (NF-H) neurofilament protein subunits mRNA in L_4-6 spinal motoneurons in adult rat during regeneration following a unilateral crush of the sciatic nerve. It was found that the hybridization signals of each neurofilament subunit rnRNA were dramatically decreased in spinal motoneurons postaxotomy by light microscopy. The hybridization signals of NF-L and NF-M mRNA were located in cytoplasm of neurons, whereas NF-H mRNA was found in both nucleus and cytoplasm of neurons. Image analysis showed that the encoding levels of mRNA for each of neurofilament subunit mRNA reduced on the 3rd d and returned to control levels on the 28th d following the lesion. The relative levels of mRNA coding for each neurofilament subunit were significantly different. The lowest level of NF-L mRNA was observed at 5 d postaxotomy, and that of NF-M, NF-H mRNA on the 7th and 10th d after injury. Moreover, the levels of HF-M and NF-H mRNA were reduced much lower and lasted much longer than that of NF-L mRNA. The observations suggest that there were different mechanisms for the regulation of neurofilament subunit genes expression. The reduced neurofilament gene expression may be due to a response to axonal injury and advance the restructure of axonal architecture.     

Mechanical performance of scallop adductor muscle during swimming.

Mechanical performance of skeletal muscle has long been the subject of intense interest, but the details of in vivo performance of individual skeletal muscles during normal locomotion remain largely unknown. Performance in vitro has been described with considerable precision under simplified loading conditions. The force production and shortening velocity of most muscles, however, probably change continuously during natural movements. Therefore, modelling in vivo performance on the basis of in vitro contractile properties is subject to large degrees of uncertainty. Designing in vitro experiments that effectively examine the limits of mechanical performance requires increasing knowledge of precisely how muscles are used during normal movements. We report here measurements of the mechanical performance of the adductor muscle in scallops during jet-propulsion swimming. Swimming in scallops is powered solely by the striated portion of the single adductor muscle. Exploiting this simple locomotor morphology with simultaneous high-resolution measurements of pressure and flow rate, we have recorded nearly instantaneous measurements of the performance of a single skeletal muscle during normal locomotion.