Schedule of Events | Symposia

The Impact of Targeted Memory Reactivation on Counter-attitudinal Learning

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Danni Chen¹ (dnchen@connect.hku.hk), Tao Xia¹, Xiaoqing Hu¹; ¹The University of Hong Kong

Sleep and targeted memory reactivation (TMR) consolidate various kinds of memories, influencing daytime behaviors. However, the effects of sleep and TMR on processing conflicting evaluative information and decisions remain unclear. We examined how reactivating counter-attitudinal learning during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep affects evaluative decision-making. We recruited 58 college students with regular sleep patterns. Participants completed an evaluative learning task (A-B) on Day 1 evening, followed by counter-attitudinal learning (A-C) on Day 2 evening. Evaluative and counter-attitudinal learning involved pairing pharmaceutical products (A) and two distinct health outcomes of opposite valences (B vs. C): Half of the products were linked to negative outcomes on Day 1 and positive outcomes on Day 2 (negative-positive [N2P]), while the remaining products had the reverse valence order (positive-negative [P2N]). During the Day 2 nocturnal NREM sleep, TMR was employed to reactivate half of the pairs. Upon awakening, participants’ evaluations were assessed using an evaluative classification task with mouse-tracking to measure attitudinal ambivalence by trajectory curvature. An item-level Bayesian Linear Mixed Model (BLMM) showed that TMR reduced post-sleep AUC in the N2P valence order. Higher cue-elicited delta power was associated with larger AUC reduction for N2P but less so for P2N. Furthermore, we measured memory integration among the A-B-C stimuli. TMR promoted memory integration in the N2P condition, wherein participants corrected recognized A-B, A-C, and B-C pairings. Cue-elicited spindle probability was linked with A-B-C memory integration. These findings highlight TMR’s potential to facilitate adaptive decision-making and memory integration, with effects varying across different valence orders.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Other