The role of sleep in the consolidation of new words in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: Preliminary results

HERRERO NEREA; BONILLA; KOCHEN SILVIA; BAVASSI LUZ; KACZER LAURA; FORCATO CECILIA

Córdoba

Congreso; XXXIII Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias; 2018

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

New memories are reactivated during sleep reinforcing cortico-cortical connections favoring memory consolidation and integration. There are contradictory results concerning the role of sleep in new word integration. In healthy subjects, some studies reveal a fast integration independent of sleep while others show sleep-dependent integration of new words. However, these results may not be contradictory. We hypothesize that there is a fast cortical integration at short time after learning, but for this information to persist in time it becomes dependent of a period of sleep. Thus, for this to be possible, a normal hippocampal-cortex communication is needed. Patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy show a diminished hippocampal-cortical synchronization which explains the impaired declarative long term memory consolidation during sleep. Thus, these patients turn out to be an optimal model to test our hypothesis. Here we show preliminary data, using a word-learning task to evaluate the role of sleep in consolidation of new information and integration with the pre-existing lexical networks