Overlapping memory replay during sleep builds cognitive schemata

Sleep enhances integration across multiple stimuli, abstraction of general rules, insight into hidden solutions and false memory formation. Newly learned information is better assimilated if compatible with an existing cognitive framework or schema. This article proposes a mechanism by which the reactivation of newly learned memories during sleep could actively underpin both schema formation and the addition of new knowledge to existing schemata. Under this model, the overlapping replay of related memories selectively strengthens shared elements. Repeated reactivation of memories in different combinations progressively builds schematic representations of the relationships between stimuli. We argue that this selective strengthening forms the basis of cognitive abstraction, and explain how it facilitates insight and false memory formation

The effect of external stimuli on dreams, as assessed using Q-Methodology

Dreams can sometimes incorporate external sensory stimuli (e.g. sounds, smells and physical sensations) into their course and content, either directly or indirectly. This shows that the brain is still able to monitor, process, and perceive what is happening in the surrounding environment during sleep. This study, considered a pilot study due to only a small number of participants, aimed to examine stimulus incorporation in dreams using two auditory stimuli of different languages - one semantically meaningful to participants and one non-meaningful. We hypothesised that participants exposed to the semantically meaningful language would all report similar experiences to each other, and different from those exposed to the non-meaningful language. All participants first spent several weeks improving their dream recall abilities, and then came to the Sleep and Cognition Laboratory at the University of Lincoln for a two hour morning nap, during which a stimulus was played to them in Rapid-Eye-Movement (REM) sleep. They were awoken shortly after to provide a dream report. All dreams contained conversation or speech of some description, but due to participants poor verbal memory for dream speech, we could not conclusively say that the stimuli were responsible for this effect. There were, however, at least two dreams with strong evidence to suggest that the stimuli were directly incorporated. Q-Methodology was used to assess similarity of dream experience. This resulted in three distinct factors: (1) calm, consistent, slightly emotional dreams; (2) emotional, normal, understandable dreams; and (3) unstable, inconsistent, unrealistic dreams. The configuration of factors amongst participants did not fully meet the predictions of the hypothesis; however, positive participant feedback on Q-sorting their dream experiences gives promise and potential for the use of Q-Methodology in future dream research. Future studies should employ an unstimulated control condition, train participants to improve verbal recall of dream speech, and ultimately, develop a theory of dreaming that includes a plausible explanation of external stimulus incorporation

A more comprehensive and commanding delineation: Mary Shelley's narrative strategy in Frankenstein

This thesis argues that the first edition of Frankenstein challenges conventional reading by employing what Simpson in Irony and Authority in Romantic Poetry calls Romantic irony, where the absence of a stable 'metacomment' precludes an authoritative reading. The novel hints at such readings but prevents them. The insights offered by Tropp's Mary Shelley's Monster, Baldick's In Frankenstein's Shadow, Poovey's The Proper Lady and the woman writer and Swingle's, 'Frankenstein's Monster and its Relatives: Problems of Knowledge in English Romanticism' are considered, but none recognises the full implications of the instability deriving from multiple first- person narratives. Clemit's The Godwinian Navel acknowledges the novel's indeterminacy, but reads a specific ideological purpose in it. Paradise Last provides a language to describe the relationship between the monster and Frankenstein, but proves too unstable to fix identity or establish moral value. Similarly, Necessity ultimately fails to provide a stable explanation in terms of cause and effect. The status of nature shifts between foreground and background, never allowing final definition. These uncertainties destabilise knowledge which is compromised by its provisional nature: no authoritative reading is possible, yet the novel has narrative coherence. The reader is encouraged to try to develop a reading the structure prevents. The radical nature of the first edition is highlighted by comparison with the 1831 edition, which removes much of the ambivalence and gives the novel a clearer morality. The novel challenges conventional methods of deriving authority by disturbing the reader's orthodox orientation in the world around him' (Simpson) in order to afford 'a point of view to the imagination for the delineation of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield' (Mary Shelley)

British Sleep Society: the COVID-19 pandemic response

The current pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus, named COVID-19, holds the entire world to ransom. A proportion of the infected patients becomes critically ill, with millions being infected and hundreds of thousands who have died so far. In some countries, national lockdown restrictions are being slowly lifted, but the World Health Organization (WHO) still registers increasing numbers of confirmed COVID-19 infections across its membership states. Against this background, the BSS brought together doctors from the respiratory and critical care response teams in Wuhan, China and London, UK in a webinar to exchange their knowledge and expertise and discuss current best practice in the management of patients with COVID-19. Following their presentations, sleep experts from the Executive Committee of the BSS discussed the impact of the pandemic and lockdown on sleep and shared practical advice regarding sleep health

Commentary: Musicians' online performance during auditory and visual statistical learning tasks

A commentary on: Musicians' Online Performance during Auditory and Visual Statistical Learning Tasks by Mandikal Vasuki, P. R., Sharma, M., Ibrahim, R. K., and Arciuli, J. (2017). Front. Hum. Neurosci. 11:114. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00114 Statistical learning (SL) is the extraction of the underlying statistical structure from sensory input (Frost et al., 2015). The extent to which this ability is domain-general (with a single central mechanism underpinning SL in any modality) or domain-specific (where the SL mechanism differs by modality) remains a central question in statistical learning (Frost et al., 2015), and two approaches have been adopted to tackle this. First is to examine the extent to which predominantly domain-specific skills such as language proficiency (Arciuli and von Koss Torkildsen, 2012) and musical expertise (Schön and François, 2011), and domain-general skills such as working memory and general IQ (Siegelman and Frost, 2015), correlate with SL ability. Second is to compare SL performance across modalities, or even examine cross-modal transfer (Durrant et al., 2016). Mandikal Vasuki et al. (2017) (and the sister paper: Mandikal Vasuki et al., 2016) make an important contribution by adopting both of these approaches. They compare auditory and visual SL using the Saffran triplet learning paradigm (Saffran et al., 1999) in musicians and non-musicians. The three key findings are that musicians are better than non-musicians at segmentation of auditory stimuli only, there is no correlation between auditory and visual performance, and that auditory performance is better overall. This last result could be due to privileged auditory processing of sequential stimuli (Conway et al., 2009), or it could just reflect differences in perceptual or memory capabilities across modalities. However, the fact that SL performance in one modality does not predict performance in another is hard to explain if a single mechanism underlying both is posited. Combined with the fact that overall better performance was found in musicians only in the auditory modality, a domain-specific SL mechanism seems to offer the most parsimonious explanation of this data

The value of designers' creative practice within complex collaborations

This paper reports a case study investigating the productive value of designers' creative practice within complex academic-industrial collaborations in which a designer's practice had a formative role. Adopting a pragmatic approach, collaborators' experiences of this project were reconstructed through interviews and ‘annotated timelines.’ Collaborators were found to value the designer's work in responding to their particular concerns whilst also opening up new possibilities. This paper discusses how such benefit is attributable to the ‘designerly thinking’ of skilled designers, shifting the focus of work from problem-solving to problematisation and enabling participants to collectively formulate concerns, roles, and potentialities. The paper concludes that designers' creative practice can enable collaborative projects to build upon and transcend participants' expertise and expectations through ‘creative exchange.

Commentary: Effects of sleep on word pair memory in children–separating item and source memory aspects

N/A (no abstract