Sleep’s short-term memory preservation and long-term affect depotentiation effect in emotional memory consolidation: behavioral and EEG evidence

Abstract Study Objectives Sleep plays a pivotal role in the off-line processing of emotional memory. However, much remains unknown for its immediate vs. long-term influences. We employed behavioral and electrophysiological measures to investigate the short- and long-term impacts of sleep vs. sleep deprivation on emotional memory. Methods Fifty-nine participants incidentally learned 60 negative and 60 neutral pictures in the evening and were randomly assigned to either sleep or sleep deprivation conditions. We measured memory recognition and subjective affective ratings in 12- and 60-h post-encoding tests, with EEGs in the delayed test. Results In a 12-h post-encoding test, compared to sleep deprivation, sleep equally preserved both negative and neutral memory, and their affective tones. In the 60-h post-encoding test, negative and neutral memories declined significantly in the sleep group, with attenuated emotional responses to negative memories over time. Furthermore, two groups showed spatial-temporally distinguishable ERPs at the delayed test: while both groups showed the old-new frontal negativity (300–500 ms, FN400), sleep-deprived participants additionally showed an old-new parietal, Late Positive Component effect (600–1000 ms, LPC). Multivariate whole-brain ERPs analyses further suggested that sleep prioritized neural representation of emotion over memory processing, while they were less distinguishable in the sleep deprivation group. Conclusions These data suggested that sleep’s impact on emotional memory and affective responses is time-dependent: sleep preserved memories and affective tones in the short term, while ameliorating affective tones in the long term. Univariate and multivariate EEG analyses revealed different neurocognitive processing of remote, emotional memories between sleep and sleep deprivation groups.