Connectionists: Three new papers on the cognitive neuroscience of learning and memory as affected by sleep (Lerner et al., 2016), amnesia (O’Connell et al., 2016), & anxiety (Khdour et al, 2016).

Thu Oct 13 17:04:26 EDT 2016

Re: Three new papers on the cognitive neuroscience of learning and memory as affected by sleep (Lerner et al., 2016), amnesia (O’Connell et al., 2016), & anxiety (Khdour et al, 2016).

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to share with you reprints of three new papers from our lab covering the cognitive neuroscience of learning and memory as it is impacted by sleep, amnesia, and anxiety. The citations, abstracts and links to the papers’ full PDFs are given below. As always, we welcome any and all feedback, comments, ideas, or pointers to relevant  or related current or past work. 

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Lerner, I., Lupkin, S., Peters, S., Corter, J., Peters, S., Cannella, L., & Gluck, M.A. (2016). The influence of sleep on emotional and cognitive processing is primarily trait- (but not state-) dependent. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. 134, 275-286.   DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2016.07.032 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2016.07.032>

http://www.gluck.edu/pdf/Lerner_etal_2016_FINAL.pdf <http://www.gluck.edu/pdf/Lerner_etal_2016_FINAL.pdf>

	• Human studies of sleep and cognition have established that different sleep stages contribute to distinct aspects of cognitive and emotional processing. However, since the majority of these findings are based on single night studies, it is difficult to determine whether such effects arise due to individual, between-subject differences in sleep patterns, or from within-subject variations in sleep over time. In the current study, we investigated the longitudinal relationship between sleep patterns and cognitive performance by monitoring both in parallel, daily, for a week. Using two cognitive tasks – one assessing emotional reactivity to facial expressions and the other evaluating learning abilities in a probabilistic categorization task – we found that between-subject differences in the average time spent in particular sleep stages predicted performance in these tasks far more than within-subject daily variations. Specifically, the typical time individuals spent in Rapid-Eye Movement (REM) sleep and Slow-Wave Sleep (SWS) was correlated to their characteristic measures of emotional reactivity, whereas the typical time spent in SWS and non-REM stages 1 and 2 was correlated to their success in category learning. These effects were maintained even when sleep properties were based on baseline measures taken prior to the experimental week. In contrast, within-subject daily variations in sleep patterns only contributed to overnight difference in one particular measure of emotional reactivity. Thus, we conclude that the effects of natural sleep on emotional cognition and category learning are more trait-dependent than state-dependent, and suggest ways to reconcile these results with previous findings in the literature.  

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O'Connell, G., Myers, C.E., Hopkins, R.O., McLaren, R.P., Gluck, M.A., & Wills, A.J. (2016, July 21; Epub). Amnesic patients show superior generalization in category learning. Neuropsychology.  DOI: 10.1037/neu0000301 <https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/neu0000301>

http://www.gluck.edu/pdf/oconnell.Myers.Gluck2016_pub.pdf <http://www.gluck.edu/pdf/oconnell.Myers.Gluck2016_pub.pdf>

	• Questions remain about the precise role of the hippocampus in this facet of learning, but a connectionist model by Gluck and Myers (1993) predicts that generalization should be enhanced following hippocampal damage. In a two-category learning task, a group of amnesic patients (n=9) learned the training items to a similar level of accuracy as matched controls (n=9). Both groups then classified new items at various levels of distortion. The amnesic group showed significantly more accurate generalization to high distortion novel items, a difference also present when compared to a larger group of unmatched controls (n=33). The model prediction of a broadening of generalization gradients in amnesia, at least for items near category boundaries, was supported by the results. Our study shows for the first time that amnesia can sometimes improve generalization.

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Khdour, H.Y., Imam, A.F., Mughrabi, I.T., Myers, C.E., Gluck, M.A., Herzallah, M.M., & Moustafa, A.A. (2016). Generalized anxiety disorder and social anxiety disorder, but not panic anxiety disorder, are associated with higher sensitivity to learning from negative feedback: behavioral and computational investigation. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. 10:20.  doi: 10.3389/fnint.2016.00020

http://www.gluck.edu/pdf/Khdour-Gluck(FrontiersIN).GAD.2016.pdf <http://www.gluck.edu/pdf/Khdour-Gluck(FrontiersIN).GAD.2016.pdf>

	• Anxiety spectrum disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder (SAD) and panic anxiety disorder (PAD), are a group of common psychiatric conditions. In this study, we tested the cognitive correlates of medication-free patients with GAD, SAD, and PAD, along with matched healthy participants, using a probabilistic category-learning task that allows the dissociation between positive and negative feedback learning. We also fitted all participants’ data to an actor-critic model that examines learning rate parameters from positive and negative feedback to investigate effects of valence vs. action on performance. SAD and GAD patients were more sensitive to negative feedback than either PAD patients or healthy participants. PAD, SAD and GAD patients did not differ in positive-feedback learning compared to healthy participants. Computational analysis revealed that participants’ behavioral results are better explained by the critic’s learning from negative feedback variable. These findings argue that (a) not all anxiety spectrum disorders share the same cognitive correlates, but are rather different in ways that do not link them to the hallmark of anxiety (higher sensitivity to negative feedback); and (b) perception of negative consequences is the core feature of GAD and SAD, but not PAD.

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- Mark

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Dr. Mark A. Gluck,  Professor  
Center for Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience
Rutgers University — Newark                               
197 University Ave.                                   
Newark, New Jersey  07102                  
 	 Web:  http://www.gluck.edu <http://www.gluck.edu/>
	 Email:  gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu <mailto:gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu>
    	 Ph:  ( 973) 353-3298

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