A combined perturbation and modelling approach to understand and modulate the interactions between brain oscillations underlying memory consolidation in human NREM sleep

We combine experimental work in human subjects with computational modelling of neurophysiological events, which correlate with and possibly underlie sleep-dependent memory consolidation in humans. Our main goals are to mechanistically understand the spatiotemporal patterns of slow oscillations, δ-waves, spindle, and sharp-wave ripple activity, to infer mechanisms of spatially distributed systems memory consolidation underlying the observed spatiotemporal patterns, to mechanistically understand and predict the impact of transcranial current stimulation on these oscillatory events, and to design efficient stimulation protocols for manipulating those patterns.

Image Time frequency representation (TFR) in the frequency range of 5 to 20 Hz for SO (left) and delta (right) events. Courtesy of B03 members

Archive – B03 (SFB1315/1)

Graphical Abstract: Experimental work (PI Flöel) in human subjects includes non-invasive (WP 1) and invasive (WP 3) recordings of sleep rhythms with and without transcranial current stimulation (tCS) and accompanied by an assessment of memory performance. Data will be passed to the computational modelling of the dynamics of sleep rhythms (PI Obermayer: WP 2 – whole brain modelling on the basis of data from WP 1; WP 4 – mesoscale modelling on the basis of data from WP 3) and the impact of perturbations. Results will feed back to WP 1 in form of suggestions for novel tCS protocols for model validation. Results will be passed to WP 5 (PI Ritter) for computational modelling of the link between patterns of sleep rhythms and neural plasticity under the parallel pathway hypothesis of Remme et al., 2020, in a multi-scale modelling setting. SO: slow oscillations, SWR: sharp wave ripples, iEEG: intracranial EEG, STDP: spike-timing dependent plasticity.