Sleep and emotional memory: translating neural response at encoding to memory accuracy in men and women with and without PTSD

Background Growing evidence suggests that sleep plays an important role in PTSD outcomes, potentially due to its influence on emotional memory consolidation, though these mechanisms remain unknown. This study sought to test the hypotheses that sleep neurophysiology, PTSD status, and sex moderates the degree to which the late positive potential (LPP) mediates memory accuracy for affective visual stimuli. Methods N = 39 participants (18 female) viewed 75 negative and 75 neutral IAPS images while EEG was recorded. After viewing the images, participants took a two-hour long nap which was followed by a memory assessment. Memory accuracy was measured using d’ = Z(hit rate) – Z(false alarm rate), where hit rate refers to the proportion of images seen during the memory assessment that are correctly identified as being previously seen, false alarm rate refers to the proportion of images seen during the memory assessment that are incorrectly identified as being previously seen, and Z() is the inverse cumulative distribution function of the standard normal distribution function. Results The early (300 – 1000 ms) and late (1000 – 1500 ms) LPP mediated enhanced discrimination accuracy for emotional compared to neural stimuli (d’) ( ps < 0.001). The association between the late LPP and d’ was moderated by sleep such that the association was stronger when participants spent proportionately more time in N3 and REM ( p = 0.02). The differences in reactivity between emotional and neutral images for both the early and late LPP were attenuated in PTSD+ individuals vs. controls ( ps < 0.001). Despite mediation results showing greater d’ for emotional compared to neutral stimuli, women showed overall worse memory accuracy for negative compared to neutral stimuli ( p < 0.001) whereas men showed no difference ( p = 0.64). Conclusions N3 and REM sleep play a critical role for memory of stimuli that produce large and sustained neural responses. PTSD is marked by a diminished ability to distinguish between negative and neutral information. More research is critical to understand sex effects on emotional memory.