ReviewThe Yale journal of biology and medicine2019
Can Slow-Wave Sleep Enhancement Improve Memory? A Review of Current Approaches and Cognitive Outcomes.
Review in The Yale journal of biology and medicine, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 50 citations in OpenAlex.
- Impaired learning, memory, and extinction in posttraumatic stress disorder: translational meta-analysis of clinical and preclinical studies.Translational psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Characteristics of macroscopic sleep structure in patients with mild cognitive impairment: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation on cognition through sleep slow-wave activity in older adults.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2026Trial
- Closed-loop modulation of sleep in children undergoing intracranial recordings.Cell reports. Medicine · 2026Trial
- Effect of TAAR1/5-HTTranslational psychiatry · 2021Trial
- Phenotypic Variability in Slow-Wave Sleep in Depression: Associations With Clinical Profiles and Disorder Severity.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- The Effect of Closed-Loop Auditory Stimulation on Memory Consolidation and Sleep Physiology in an Ecological Setting.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- Neurocognition After Perturbed Sleep (NAPS): A Protocol for an Experimental Study Examining the Impact of Sleep on Neurocognition, Functioning, and Clinical Indicators in People with Schizophrenia.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Disruption of sleep macro- and microstructure in Alzheimer's disease: overlaps between neuropsychology, neurophysiology, and neuroimaging.GeroScience · 2025Article
- Acoustic stimulation and other emerging approaches to enhance sleep: design notes for the next generation of closed-loop neurostimulation technology.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Review
- Sleep architecture in Alzheimer's disease continuum: The deep sleep question.Open life sciences · 2025Article
- Acoustically evoked K-complexes together with sleep spindles boost verbal declarative memory consolidation in healthy adults.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- A pilot time-in-bed restriction intervention behaviorally enhances slow-wave activity in older adults.Frontiers in sleep · 2024Article
- Polysomnographically mediated cognitive improvements in individuals with insomnia symptoms following continuous theta-burst stimulation of the default mode network.Frontiers in sleep · 2024Article
- EEG-LLAMAS: A low-latency neurofeedback platform for artifact reduction in EEG-fMRI.NeuroImage · 2023Article
- Sleep Spindle Characteristics and Relationship with Memory Ability in Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea-Hypopnea Syndrome.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Magnetic Resonance Images Implicate That Glymphatic Alterations Mediate Cognitive Dysfunction in Alzheimer Disease.Annals of neurology · 2023Article
- The Impact of Sleep on Neurocognition and Functioning in Schizophrenia-Is It Time to Wake-Up?Journal of psychiatry and brain science · 2022Article
- The top 100 most cited papers in insomnia: A bibliometric analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Review
- Mediating Effect of Sleep Quality on the Relationship Between Electronic Screen Media Use and Academic Performance Among College Students.Nature and science of sleep · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Slow-wave sleep (SWS) is involved in the overnight consolidation of declarative memories. Recent efforts using auditory stimulation, slow-oscillatory transcranial direct current stimulation (so-tDCS), and pharmacological agents have targeted sleep slow-waves as a method for enhancing cognitive performance. However, no studies thus far have integrated current evidence to provide a preliminary review of the effects of SWS enhancement on memory and other cognitive outcomes. The objective of this review was to synthesize the results of recent experimental studies that have used auditory stimulation, electrical, and pharmacological methods to boost both SWS and cognitive performance. A systematic review was done to identify and consolidate all currently existing empirical studies in this area. We found that each stimulation method could enhance slow-wave power and/or SWS duration in human subjects. Closed-loop, in-phase auditory stimulation enhanced verbal declarative memory in healthy adults. Electrical stimulation using so-tDCS showed some efficacy in promoting verbal declarative memory, picture recognition memory, and location memory. Interleukin-6 and sodium oxybate enhanced declarative verbal memory, while tiagabine and sodium oxybate improved some non-memory measures of cognitive performance. There is some evidence that so-tDCS can also improve certain cognitive outcomes in clinical populations. Overall, future studies should recruit larger sample sizes drawn from more diverse populations, and determine clinical significance and effect sizes of each enhancement methodology.
Indexed as
Identifiers
30923474PMC6430170W2986214655What OpenQuestion holds
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.