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. 2024 Nov 22;9(1):328.
doi: 10.1038/s41392-024-02057-y.

Balancing memory in sleep: firing barrages as a circuit breaker for reactivation

Hayder Amin  1   2
Affiliations

Balancing memory in sleep: firing barrages as a circuit breaker for reactivation

Hayder Amin. Signal Transduct Target Ther. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: The author declares no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Wakefulness and Sleep: Neural Patterns for Memory Encoding and Consolidation. a In a wakeful state, the brain encodes diverse real-world experiences such as learning tasks, decision-making strategies, and social interactions. These experiences engage hippocampal circuits, driving key activity patterns like sharp-wave ripples (SWRs), theta waves, and gamma oscillations. The hippocampus encodes these experiences through synaptic plasticity, with specific activity bursts in time and frequency supporting learning and memory encoding. b During non-REM sleep, the brain consolidates these wakeful experiences. The hippocampus replays and reactivates the same neurons engaged during wakefulness, with SWRs driving the reactivation. Importantly, BARRs provide inhibitory regulation, ensuring balanced reactivation and preventing excessive excitation. This balance counteracts SWRs, maintaining network stability and enabling effective memory consolidation. c The balance between excitation and inhibition (EXC./INH.) is essential for computational efficiency and network stability during both wakeful learning and sleep-dependent consolidation. In conditions like epilepsy, a lack of inhibition leads to excessive synchrony, resulting in seizures and disrupted memory processes. In Alzheimer’s disease, early-stage network hyperactivity and impaired inhibition hinder memory consolidation, contributing to cognitive decline. Disruptions in EXC./INH. balance in these disorders lead to memory deficits, highlighting potential therapeutic targets for regulating memory consolidation processes. Waveforms of SWRs and BARRs are representative and do not depict actual data
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