ArticlePsychology and aging2013
Sleep, memory, and aging: the link between slow-wave sleep and episodic memory changes from younger to older adults.
Article in Psychology and aging, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 86 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
86 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 177 citations in OpenAlex.
- Daytime Napping and Cognitive Health in Older Adults: A Systematic Review.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2023Pooled it
- The effect of sleep on novel word learning in healthy adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2021Pooled it
- A systematic review and meta-analysis of individual differences in naturalistic sleep quality and episodic memory performance in young and older adults.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Pooled it
- Obstructive sleep apnea, cognition and Alzheimer's disease: A systematic review integrating three decades of multidisciplinary research.Sleep medicine reviews · 2020Pooled it
- Comorbid insomnia and sleep apnea is associated with worse verbal episodic memory in older females.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2025Trial
- Sleep loss disrupts the neural signature of successful learning.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Trial
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- Task switching in older adults with and without insomnia.Sleep medicine · 2017Trial
- Memory improvement via slow-oscillatory stimulation during sleep in older adults.Neurobiology of aging · 2015Trial
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- Protocol for modulating anesthesia delta oscillations using closed loop auditory stimulation.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Contextualizing Caregiver Burden in Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Dyadic Perspective.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Sleep longer, think sharper: extra sleep offsets poor sleep quality in young-old adults.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2025Article
- Slow-wave sleep and REM sleep differentially contribute to memory representational transformation.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Objective sleep monitoring at home in older adults: A scoping review.Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- Sleep selectively and durably enhances memory for the sequence of real-world experiences.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Influence of sedentary behavior and physical activity in leisure and work on sleep duration: data from NHANES 2017-2018.Journal of activity, sedentary and sleep behaviors · 2024Article
- Associations between longitudinal changes in sleep stages and risk of cognitive decline in older men.Sleep · 2024Article
- U-shaped association between sleep duration and biological aging: Evidence from the UK Biobank study.Aging cell · 2024Article
26 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In younger adults, recently learned episodic memories are reactivated and consolidated during slow-wave sleep (SWS). It is interesting that SWS declines across the life span, but little research has examined whether sleep-dependent memory consolidation occurs in older adults. In this study, younger adults and healthy older adults encoded word pairs in the morning or evening and then returned following a sleep or no-sleep interval. Sleep-stage scoring was obtained by using a home sleep-stage monitoring system. In the younger adult group, there was a positive correlation between word retention and amount of SWS during the retention interval. In contrast, the older adults demonstrated no significant positive correlations but one significant negative correlation between memory and SWS. These findings suggest that the link between episodic memory and SWS that is typically observed in younger adults may be weakened or otherwise changed in the healthy older adult population.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.