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Sleep for Enhanced Learning

N/A

Recruiting

Led By Anna C Schapiro, PhD

Research Sponsored by University of Pennsylvania

Eligibility Criteria Checklist

Specific guidelines that determine who can or cannot participate in a clinical trial

Must have

Be between 18 and 65 years old

Timeline

Screening 3 weeks

Treatment Varies

Follow Up within first session (spanning 2-3 hrs.) and at approximately one week delay in second session (spanning 1-2 hrs.)

Awards & highlights

No Placebo-Only Group

Summary

This trial will test hypotheses about how humans learn novel structure and how sleep contributes to it, using fMRI and EEG, to inform further model development.

Who is the study for?

This trial is for healthy adults aged 18-35 with normal or corrected vision, normal hearing, fluent English skills, and no history of major psychiatric/neurological disorders. It excludes vulnerable populations, those on antidepressants/sedatives (for MRI), anyone with neurological disorders (for EEG), MR contraindications like metal implants, claustrophobia (MRI-specific), and pregnant women.

What is being tested?

The study investigates how humans learn structured information over time and the role of sleep in this process. Using high-resolution fMRI to track brain activity and real-time sleep EEG to influence memory reactivation, it aims to understand hippocampal functions in learning and memory consolidation.

What are the potential side effects?

There are generally no direct side effects from participating in this type of cognitive research. However, some individuals may experience discomfort from lying still during an MRI scan or might find the EEG setup during sleep to be unusual.

Timeline

Screening ~ 3 weeks3 visits

Treatment ~ Varies

Follow Up ~ within first session (spanning 2-3 hrs.) and at approximately one week delay in second session (spanning 1-2 hrs.)

Screening ~ 3 weeks

Treatment ~ Varies

Follow Up ~within first session (spanning 2-3 hrs.) and at approximately one week delay in second session (spanning 1-2 hrs.)

This trial's timeline: 3 weeks for screening, Varies for treatment, and within first session (spanning 2-3 hrs.) and at approximately one week delay in second session (spanning 1-2 hrs.) for reporting.

Treatment Details

Study Objectives

Study objectives can provide a clearer picture of what you can expect from a treatment.

Primary study objectives

Brain-behavior correlations

Changes in multivariate representations

Correlations between activity across brain regions

+1 more

Awards & Highlights

No Placebo-Only Group

All patients enrolled in this study will receive some form of active treatment.

Trial Design

3Treatment groups

Experimental Treatment

Group I: Manipulating replay during sleep using real-time EEGExperimental Treatment2 Interventions

In the proposed electroencephalography (EEG) study, all participants will undergo the same procedure. Participants will learn the visual features and spoken names associated with three categories of novel objects. Participants' memory for these objects and the objects' parts will be tested before and after a nap. The investigators will monitor brain activity during the nap in real time and, at optimal moments, quietly play the spoken names of the objects to encourage reactivation of particular objects in particular orders. The investigators will assess how this manipulation impacts memory for these objects.

Group II: Learning and consolidation in category learningExperimental Treatment1 Intervention

The proposed functional magnetic resonance imaging study assesses the neural representations contributing to humans' ability to learn new categories of objects. All participants will undergo the same procedure. Participants will learn about novel objects, each with several colored parts. Some parts are unique to individual objects and others are shared among the members of the category. The investigators will assess how different regions of the brain contribute to learning and remembering these different kinds of parts, and how the resulting representations support category understanding. Participants will be brought back one week later for a second scan, to evaluate how the neural substrates of these processes change with consolidation.

Group III: Learning and consolidation in Associative InferenceExperimental Treatment1 Intervention

The proposed functional magnetic resonance imaging study assesses the neural representations contributing to humans' ability to associate objects in the support of simple inferences and generalization. All participants will undergo the same procedure. Participants will learn about pairs of objects and then be asked to make judgments and inferences about the relationships between the objects. The order of presentation of the objects will be manipulated within subjects, as different learning theories make different predictions about how learning will unfold under different orderings. Participants will be brought back one week later for a second scan, to evaluate how the neural substrates of these processes change with consolidation.

Treatment

First Studied

Drug Approval Stage

How many patients have taken this drug

Sleep

2017

N/A

~1410

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