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Breathing coordinates brain rhythms for memory consolidation during sleep

Just as a conductor coordinates different instruments in an orchestra to produce a symphony, breathing coordinates brain waves in the hippocampus to strengthen memory while we sleep, a new study from Northwestern Medicine reports.

This is the first time that breathing rhythms during sleep have been linked to these hippocampal brain waves (called slow waves, spindles, and ripples) in humans. Scientists knew these waves were related to memory, but their underlying driver was unknown.

“To strengthen memories, three special neural oscillations emerge and synchronize in the hippocampus during sleep, but they were thought to appear and disappear at random times,” said study senior author Christina Zelano, a professor of neurology at the School of Medicine. Feinberg of Northwestern University. “We found that they are coordinated by respiratory rhythms.”

The Northwestern scientists found that hippocampal oscillations occur at particular points in the respiratory cycle, suggesting that breathing is a critical rhythm for proper memory consolidation during sleep.

“Memory consolidation relies on the orchestration of brain waves during sleep, and we showed that this process is closely synchronized with breathing,” said corresponding author Andrew Sheriff, a postdoctoral student in Zelano’s lab.

The study will be published on December 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings have important implications for sleep breathing disorders, such as sleep apnea, which is linked to poor memory consolidation.

We have all had the experience of having better memories after a night’s sleep. This was observed as early as ancient Rome, when the scholar Quintillion wrote of the “curious fact” that “the interval of a single night will greatly increase the strength of memory,” the study’s authors said. He was describing what we now call memory consolidation, which is achieved by the exquisitely tuned coordination of different brain waves in the hippocampus.

“When you sleep, your brain actively replays the experiences you had during the day,” Sheriff said.

Sheriff had just returned from a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he had to learn his way around a new city. “The hippocampus plays an important role in forming a map of a new area,” Sheriff said. “I would wake up and feel like I had a better representation of the city around me. This was facilitated by the oscillations that occurred during my sleep, which we discovered are coordinated by breathing.”

The study indicates that people with breathing problems during sleep should seek treatment, Sheriff said.

“When you don’t sleep, your brain suffers, your cognition suffers, you get confused,” Sheriff said. “We also know that sleep-disordered breathing is linked to stroke, dementia, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

“If you listen to someone breathe, you may be able to tell when they are asleep, because breathing has a different rhythm when you are asleep. One reason for this may be that breathing involves performing a careful task: coordinating brain waves that are related to memory.”

Other Northwestern authors include Guangyu Zhou, Justin Morgenthaler, Christopher Cyr, Katherina K. Hauner, Mahmoud Omidbeigi, Joshua Rosenow, Stephan Schuele, and Gregory Lane.

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