Modern civilization is notorious for its widespread problem with sleep deprivation, which affects people of all ages and has a negative influence on the body and the brain. Human minds are prone to forgetting when they are sleep deprived, which makes it challenging to remember certain details. The problem now has a far simpler answer thanks to a drug used to treat asthma that also improves memory in people.
Robbert Havekes, a neuroscientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, found that learning when sleep deprived (memory loss) does not necessarily result in memory loss; rather, it simply becomes more difficult to recall.
Together with his team, he discovered a method to restore access to this "hidden information" days after studying while sleep-deprived using optogenetic methods and the human-approved asthma medication: roflumilast. Their findings were reported in Current Biology.
"We previously focused on finding ways to support memory processes during a sleep deprivation episode," says Havekes.
The researchers looked at whether amnesia brought on by sleep deprivation was a direct result of information loss or merely caused by challenges in retrieving information.
"Sleep deprivation undermines memory processes, but every student knows that an answer that eluded them during the exam might pop up hours afterwards." In that case, the information was, in fact, stored in the brain, but just difficult to retrieve.
"In our sleep deprivation studies, we applied this approach to neurons in the hippocampus, the area in the brain where spatial information and factual knowledge are stored," said Havekes.
The study that was published in Current Biology indicates that studies in mice demonstrate that sleep deprivation does not necessarily cause memory loss but instead leads to the suboptimal storage of information that cannot be retrieved without drug treatment or optogenetic stimulation.
Furthermore, our findings suggest that object-location memories, consolidated under sleep deprivation conditions and thought to be lost, can be made accessible again several days after the learning and sleep deprivation episode, using the clinically approved PDE4 inhibitor roflumilast.
