ReviewNature and science of sleep2021
Does Sleep Selectively Strengthen Certain Memories Over Others Based on Emotion and Perceived Future Relevance?
Review in Nature and science of sleep, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
37 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Sleep reactivation did not boost suppression-induced forgetting.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- Slow Oscillation-Sleep Spindle Coupling Is Associated With Expectancy Measures of Fear Extinction Retention in Trauma-Exposed Individuals.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2026Article
- Theta oscillations tag episodic memories for sleep-dependent consolidation.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Recovery sleep after total sleep deprivation preserves neutral and enhances emotional declarative memory.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2026Article
- Anxiety severity in peri-adolescents is associated with greater generalization of negative memories following a period of sleep relative to wake.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2025Article
- The categorical effect of negative emotion on memory before and after sleep deprivation.Neuropsychologia · 2025Article
- Nighttime is the right time: the time interval to overnight sleep following an embarrassing experience does not influence long-term emotional responses to its reactivated episode.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2025Article
- Both slow wave and rapid eye movement sleep contribute to emotional memory consolidation.Communications biology · 2025Article
- The effects of shared, depression-specific, and anxiety-specific internalizing symptoms on negative and neutral episodic memories following post-learning sleep.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Disarming emotional memories using targeted memory reactivation during rapid eye movement sleep.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Article
- Update on "Emotion and autobiographical memory": 14 years of advances in understanding functions, constructions, and consequences.Physics of life reviews · 2024Review
- Waking Up Brain with Electrical Stimulation to Boost Memory in Sleep: A Neuroscience Exploration.Neuroscience bulletin · 2024Article
- Nocturnal exposure to a preferred ambient scent does not affect dream emotionality or post-sleep core affect valence in young adults.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Article
- REM disruption and REM Vagal Activity Predict Extinction Recall in Trauma-Exposed Individuals.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Age-related positivity effect in emotional memory consolidation from middle age to late adulthood.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Neural reactivation during human sleep.Emerging topics in life sciences · 2023Review
- How do the sleep features that characterise depression impact memory?Emerging topics in life sciences · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Sleep has been found to have a beneficial effect on memory consolidation. It has furthermore frequently been suggested that sleep does not strengthen all memories equally. The first aim of this review paper was to examine whether sleep selectively strengthens emotional declarative memories more than neutral ones. We examined this first by reviewing the literature focusing on sleep/wake contrasts, and then the literature on whether any specific factors during sleep preferentially benefit emotional memories, with a special focus on the often-suggested claim that rapid eye movement sleep primarily consolidates emotional memories. A second aim was to examine if sleep preferentially benefits memories based on other cues of future relevance such as reward, test-expectancy or different instructions during encoding. Once again, we first focused on studies comparing sleep and wake groups, and then on studies examining the contributions of specific factors during sleep (for each future relevance paradigm, respectively). The review revealed that although some support exists that sleep is more beneficial for certain kinds of memories based on emotion or other cues of future relevance, the majority of studies does not support such an effect. Regarding specific factors during sleep, our review revealed that no sleep variable has reliably been found to be specifically associated with the consolidation of certain kinds of memories over others based on emotion or other cues of future relevance.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What 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.