Ball, Lewis V;
Kimel, Eva;
Keller, Vanessa G;
Ward, Eloise;
Cairney, Scott A;
Mak, Matthew HC;
Li, Lu;
... Gaskell, M Gareth; + view all
(2025)
No Evidence for a Targeted Memory Reactivation Effect on Word-Meaning Priming.
Neuropsychologia
, Article 109264. 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109264.
(In press).
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Abstract
The subordinate meaning of a homonym becomes temporarily more accessible after it is encountered, an effect termed word-meaning priming. Over the longer-term, word-meaning priming is better maintained across periods of sleep compared with wakefulness. This has been explained as sleep actively consolidating episodic memories related to recent linguistic events (Gaskell et al., 2019). Here, we tested this hypothesis by investigating whether word-meaning priming can be boosted following sleep using targeted memory reactivation (TMR), a technique of biassing specific memories for sleep-based consolidation by presenting information-associated sensory cues during sleep. In an exposure phase, 40 (of 80) homonyms were primed toward their subordinate meaning via a sentence, which was also associated with an auditory cue (the homonym) for TMR. Participants then took a ∼2 hour nap, where half of the cues from exposure (memory cues) were replayed with the aim of strengthening the subordinate sentence meaning, along with 20 cues that had not been encountered previously (control cues). After sleep, there was an overall word-meaning priming effect, however there was no additional benefit of TMR on priming, nor did TMR benefit the recall of contextual information. Interestingly, there was an increased sleep spindle/beta band power response to memory cues relative to control cues, indicating cue-evoked memory reprocessing during sleep. These findings are consistent with a bounded role of sleep in actively consolidating linguistic-related memories.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | No Evidence for a Targeted Memory Reactivation Effect on Word-Meaning Priming |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109264 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.10... |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission. |
| Keywords: | Episodic memory, Language processing, Memory reactivation, Semantic ambiguity, Sleep |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Experimental Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10213100 |
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