Classical Music, Educational Learning, and Slow Wave Sleep: A Targeted Memory Reactivation Experiment.

Classical Music, Educational Learning, and Slow Wave Sleep: A Targeted Memory Reactivation Experiment. Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2020 Mar 04;:107206 Authors: Gao C, Fillmore P, Scullin MK Abstract Poor sleep in college students compromises the memory consolidation processes necessary to retain course materials. A solution may lie in targeting reactivation of memories during sleep (TMR). Fifty undergraduate students completed a college-level microeconomics lecture (mathematics-based) while listening to distinctive classical music (Chopin, Beethoven, and Vivaldi). After they fell asleep, we re-played the classical music songs (TMR) or a control noise during slow wave sleep. Relative to the control condition, the TMR condition showed an 18% improvement for knowledge transfer items that measured concept integration (d=0.63), increasing the probability of "passing" the test with a grade of 70 or above (OR=4.68, 95%CI:1.21,18.04). The benefits of TMR did not extend to a 9-month follow-up test when performance dropped to floor levels, demonstrating that long-term-forgetting curves are largely resistant to experimentally-consolidated memories. Spectral analyses revealed greater frontal theta activity during slow wave sleep in the TMR condition than the control condition (d=.87), and greater frontal theta activity across conditions was associated with protection against long-term-forgetting at the next-day and 9-month follow-up tests (rs=.42), at ...
Source: Neurobiology of Learning and Memory - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Neurobiol Learn Mem Source Type: research