ArticleNature communications2017
Deep sleep maintains learning efficiency of the human brain.
Article in Nature communications, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. It is linked to trial NCT04716673 (Investigating the Effect of Closed-loop Auditory Stimulation on Sleep and Behavior in Patients With Epilepsy and Healthy Controls), which is not on this map. Cited by 59 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Investigating the Effect of Closed-loop Auditory Stimulation on Sleep and Behavior in Patients With Epilepsy and Healthy Controls: a Developmental Study
Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 155 citations in OpenAlex.
- Brain stimulation techniques as novel treatment options for insomnia: A systematic review.Journal of sleep research · 2023Pooled it
- Sleep Well, Study Well: A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Studies on the Interplay between Sleep and School Experience in Adolescence.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Enhancing sleep slow waves with auditory stimulation in people with Parkinson's disease: a randomized proof-of-concept trial.Scientific reports · 2026Trial
- Closed-loop modulation of sleep in children undergoing intracranial recordings.Cell reports. Medicine · 2026Trial
- Trait anxiety selectively amplifies reward learning under uncertainty, while N3 sleep attenuates it.iScience · 2026Article
- Auditory Stimulation of Slow-Wave Sleep Promotes Recovery after Brain Injury in an Animal Model.Annals of neurology · 2026Article
- Enhancement of sleep slow wave activity using transcranial electrical stimulation with temporal interference: an interim analysis of the STRENGTHEN study.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Tone-Evoked Sleep Electroencephalographic Slow Oscillations as a Function of Peripheral Rhythms: New Insights Into the Brain-Heart Integration.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- Article
- Altered wakeful theta activity characterizes levodopa-induced dyskinesia in Parkinson's disease.NPJ Parkinson's disease · 2026Article
- Tracing infant sleep neurophysiology longitudinally from 3 to 6 months: EEG insights into brain development.Npj biological timing and sleep · 2026Article
- Thalamic transcranial electrical stimulation with temporal interference enhances sleep spindle activity during a daytime nap.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2026Article
- Recent Evidence of Non-Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Oscillation Abnormalities in Psychiatric Disorders.Current psychiatry reports · 2025Review
- The Future of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation in Sleep Medicine.Journal of sleep research · 2025Review
- Article
- Overnight changes in performance fatigability and their relationship to modulated deep sleep oscillations via auditory stimulation.Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- Novel murine closed-loop auditory stimulation paradigm elicits macrostructural sleep benefits in neurodegeneration.Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- Climate warming may undermine sleep duration and quality in repeated-measure study of 23 million records.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Optimizing automated phase-targeted auditory stimulation protocols for procedural memory consolidation during sleep in a home setting.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2025Article
- Multi-region processing during sleep for memory and cognition.Proceedings of the Japan Academy. Series B, Physical and biological sciences · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is hypothesized that deep sleep is essential for restoring the brain's capacity to learn efficiently, especially in regions heavily activated during the day. However, causal evidence in humans has been lacking due to the inability to sleep deprive one target area while keeping the natural sleep pattern intact. Here we introduce a novel approach to focally perturb deep sleep in motor cortex, and investigate the consequences on behavioural and neurophysiological markers of neuroplasticity arising from dedicated motor practice. We show that the capacity to undergo neuroplastic changes is reduced by wakefulness but restored during unperturbed sleep. This restorative process is markedly attenuated when slow waves are selectively perturbed in motor cortex, demonstrating that deep sleep is a requirement for maintaining sustainable learning efficiency.
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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.