We present a protocol used to discover an interactive effect between sleep and cortisol on memory consolidation, particularly for negative arousing images. Specifically, the experimental design utilizes eye tracking, salivary cortisol analysis, and behavioral memory testing – methods that can be used with both healthy and clinical participants.
Although rises in cortisol can benefit memory consolidation, as can sleep soon after encoding, there is currently a paucity of literature as to how these two factors may interact to influence consolidation. Here we present a protocol to examine the interactive influence of cortisol and sleep on memory consolidation, by combining three methods: eye tracking, salivary cortisol analysis, and behavioral memory testing across sleep and wake delays. To assess resting cortisol levels, participants gave a saliva sample before viewing negative and neutral objects within scenes. To measure overt attention, participants’ eye gaze was tracked during encoding. To manipulate whether sleep occurred during the consolidation window, participants either encoded scenes in the evening, slept overnight, and took a recognition test the next morning, or encoded scenes in the morning and remained awake during a comparably long retention interval. Additional control groups were tested after a 20 min delay in the morning or evening, to control for time-of-day effects. Together, results showed that there is a direct relation between resting cortisol at encoding and subsequent memory, only following a period of sleep. Through eye tracking, it was further determined that for negative stimuli, this beneficial effect of cortisol on subsequent memory may be due to cortisol strengthening the relation between where participants look during encoding and what they are later able to remember. Overall, results obtained by a combination of these methods uncovered an interactive effect of sleep and cortisol on memory consolidation.
The ability to consolidate information is dependent on countless factors, with sleep and the stress hormone cortisol being two of the most influential variables. Prior research has shown that elevated cortisol levels, either induced through exogenous cortisol administration or psychosocial stress, often are associated with a selective enhancement of memory for emotional relative to neutral stimuli1-7. Sleep has been shown to have a similar selective effect on emotional memory8,9: When participants are presented with scenes composed of a negative or neutral object placed on a neutral background, sleep unbinds the scenes, preserving memory for the negative objects, while allowing memory for the less salient scene components (neutral objects and neutral backgrounds) to decay10-12.
While these two literatures focus on the independent effects of cortisol and sleep on emotional memory, it is possible that cortisol and sleep have an interactive effect. Interestingly, because studies investigating the effects of cortisol on memory include a retention delay of at least 24 hr, which necessarily includes a night of sleep, it is impossible to determine whether sleep is necessary for cortisol to have a facilitative effect on consolidation. Similarly, while research has shown that sleep preferentially benefits memory for emotional information, it is possible that these effects may be intensified in individuals with higher cortisol levels during encoding.
For these reasons, it is important to understand not only how sleep and cortisol independently support memory formation, but also to investigate whether sleep and cortisol interact to support memory formation. After all, there are important links between sleep and cortisol in normal aging13, and forms of psychopathology that are associated with memory deficits14,15. Only by using a combination of methodologies is it possible to understand the complex interactions between sleep and cortisol, and their effects on memory consolidation. Specifically, by combining the method of salivary cortisol collection with a sleep versus wake design, it is possible to determine whether there is an interactive effect of these two variables on consolidation. Also valuable is that through the use of eye tracking to measure eye gaze during encoding, it is possible to elucidate a potential attentional mechanism underlying this effect.
1. Participant Screening and Preparation for the Experiment
2. Conditions and Experimental Design
3. Stimuli Construction
4. Cortisol Procedure
5. Eye Tracking/Encoding Procedure
6. Study-test Delay
7. Recognition Procedure
Effects of Sleep and Cortisol on Memory for Emotional and Neutral Stimuli
The first hypothesis addressed is that elevated cortisol during encoding will facilitate memory for emotional more than neutral stimuli, and that this effect is dependent on sleep occurring between encoding and retrieval. Figure 4A plots the effect of cortisol on memory for negative objects. Standardized levels of cortisol (x-axis) and memory for negative objects (y-axis) were directly related in the Sleep group (in red) but not the Wake group (in gray). The Group (Sleep vs. Wake) by Cortisol interaction was significant [t(41) = 2.23, β = 2.92, p = 0.031]: Higher cortisol at encoding predicted memory for negative objects if participants slept between encoding and retrieval [t(24) = 2.31, β = 0.43, p = 0.031], but not if they stayed awake [t(16) = 0.40, β = 0.10, p = 0.70; see Figure 4A]. These significant effects were not due to gender, menstrual cycle, or critically, time of day, which was determined by running additional analyses with the Morning and Evening Short Delay groups. For neutral memory (see Figure 4B), a similar, but weaker pattern was observed. There was a marginally significant relation between cortisol levels prior to encoding (x-axis) and memory for neutral objects (y-axis) in the Sleep group [in blue; t(24) = 1.76, β = 0.34, p = .092], but not the Wake group [in gray; t(16) = 0.98, β = 0.25, p = 0.34]. The interaction between Cortisol and Group was marginally significant [t(41) = 1.95, β = 2.55, p = 0.059].
Effects of Sleep and Cortisol on the Interaction between Attention during Encoding and Consolidation
It was hypothesized that this beneficial effect of cortisol on emotional memory may be partly due to cortisol’s ability to ‘tag’ information as important to remember at the time of encoding, leading to the subsequent prioritization of that information during sleep. This “emotional tagging” concept suggests that encoding arousing stimuli activates neural mechanisms, leading to long-term plasticity in the synapses marked by the tag23-25. It is possible that elevated cortisol during encoding helps to set these tags, leading to the selective preservation of this information during consolidation. To investigate this possibility, the eye-tracking data were analyzed to determine whether higher cortisol increases the likelihood that sleep-based consolidation processes preferentially strengthen memory for the information that receives the most attention during encoding. First, the proportion of time each participant spent looking at each object within each scene (i.e., the AOI) relative to the total scene viewing time was calculated. The scenes were then sorted on a post-hoc basis, using each participant’s recognition data to sort the scenes into those for which the participant later remembered the object and those for which the participant later forgot the object. Lastly, a score was computed to reflect the difference in looking time between subsequently remembered and subsequently forgotten objects (See Figure 5). For example, if participants looked at the objects they subsequently remembered for an average of 75% of the time that the scene was on the screen, and looked at the objects they subsequently forgot for an average of 65% of the time that the scene was on the screen, their difference in looking time score would be 10%.
Similar to the analyses conducted on the effects of sleep and cortisol on memory (Figure 4), a linear regression was used to test the effects of sleep and cortisol on this difference in looking time at encoding as a function of later memory. For negative objects (see Figure 6A), resting cortisol (x-axis) marginally predicted the difference in looking time at encoding as a function of later memory (y-axis) in the Sleep group [in red; t(23) = 1.869, β = 0.37, p = 0.075] but not the Wake group [in gray; t(16) = 0.168, β = 0.043, p = 0.87]. The interaction between Cortisol and Group was significant [t(40) = -2.04, β = -2.99, p = 0.049], and critically, this significant effect was not due to gender, menstrual cycle, or time of day. For neutral objects (see Figure 6B), there was no effect of cortisol in the Sleep group (in blue) nor the Wake group (in gray), and the interaction between Cortisol and Group was not significant.
Figure 1. Visual depiction of the procedure described in this video report, separated by Group. This figure displays the four groups of participants (Sleep, Wake, Morning Short Delay, and Evening Short Delay), as well as the timing of the pre-encoding cortisol sample, encoding, and retrieval for each group.
Figure 2. Visual depiction of stimuli used during encoding. This figure shows that each scene was composed of either a negative or a neutral object placed in front of a neutral background. It also shows that participants viewed these scenes for three seconds each, during which time they indicated whether they would approach or back away from the scene if they encountered it during real life.
Figure 3. Visual depiction of stimuli used during retrieval. This figure shows that participants were presented with objects and backgrounds (separately) during the recognition memory test. These objects and backgrounds were either previously presented during encoding (“old”) or had never before been seen in the context of the experiment (“new”).
Figure 4. Effect of cortisol on memory for negative and neutral objects. A plots the effect of standardized cortisol levels on memory for negative objects. B plots the effect of standardized cortisol levels on memory for neutral objects. Legend: Sleep [red diamonds (neg), blue diamonds (neu)], Wake [gray squares], Sleep Linear Fit [red line (neg), blue line (neu)], Wake Linear Fit [gray line].
Figure 5. Visual depiction of the encoding (left) and retrieval (right) procedure as related to the dependent variable (difference in looking time during encoding as a function of later memory) assessed in eye-tracking analyses. This figure shows how the dependent variable in eye-tracking analyses (the difference in looking time during encoding as a function of later memory) was calculated. Particularly, this score reflects the proportion of time during encoding that participants looked at objects that they later remembered (“hits”) minus the proportion of time during encoding that participants looked at objects that they later forgot (“misses”).
Figure 6. Effect of cortisol on the difference in looking time at encoding as a function of later memory for negative and neutral objects. Looking time was calculated as the proportion of total scene viewing time that participants spent looking at the object within the scene. A score was then computed to reflect the difference in looking time between subsequently remembered and subsequently forgotten objects, and a linear regression was used to test the effects of cortisol and sleep on this score. A plots the effect for negative objects, while B plots the effect for neutral objects. Legend: Sleep [red diamonds (neg), blue diamonds (neu)], Wake [gray squares], Sleep Linear Fit [red line (neg), blue line (neu)], Wake Linear Fit [gray line].
This experimental design provided the first evidence that the beneficial effects of pre-encoding cortisol on memory are significant only when sleep occurs during the consolidation period. Only by both measuring cortisol levels and manipulating whether the consolidation interval included sleep was it possible to determine that sleep and cortisol have an interactive effect on memory. This design was critical in determining that, in the prior studies that have tied pre-learning cortisol to facilitated memory for negative stimuli1,5, these effects of cortisol may manifest because of the sleep occurring during the consolidation interval.
This finding is made even more interesting considering that the sleep versus wake design necessitated testing participants in the two groups at different times of day. Cortisol follows a circadian rhythm26, with the highest cortisol levels in the early morning, and the lowest in the evening. As such, the Sleep participants were all within a narrow range of relatively low cortisol levels, having encoded in the evening, while the Wake participants had higher and more variable cortisol levels, having encoded in the morning. By using this design, it appears that even small differences in relatively low cortisol levels are sufficient to influence memory consolidation over a period of sleep. At the same time, however, the diurnal variation in cortisol also complicates the design. Future work may consider how to control for the effects of the diurnal variation of cortisol in different ways. One such way would be to replicate the present findings using an afternoon nap paradigm. Because cortisol levels between a Nap and Wake condition would be statistically equivalent, circadian fluctuations in cortisol in such a paradigm would not be a concern.
While many questions remain about how cortisol interacts with sleep to enhance emotional memory consolidation, the current work provides evidence that the facilitative effect of pre-encoding cortisol on emotional memory following delays of at least 24 hr including sleep1,5,27 may be due to interactions between cortisol and sleep-dependent consolidation processes. Without a design in which one condition’s delay includes sleep and the other does not, it would not be possible to isolate whether sleep is necessary for this effect to be observed. Furthermore, by assessing participants’ eye gaze during encoding, it was determined that this facilitative effect of cortisol on emotional memory may be due to cortisol modulating the relation between attention to emotional information at encoding and the subsequent consolidation of that information during sleep: With elevated cortisol, there is a stronger relation between what participants look at during encoding and what they later remember. It is possible that this is because elevated cortisol at encoding ‘tags’ this emotional information as important to remember, which leads sleep to selectively strengthen that salient information during the consolidation interval.
This unique combination of methods – a sleep versus wake design, a measurement of resting salivary cortisol values, an assessment of eye gaze during encoding, and an administration of a behavioral recognition memory test – led not only to uncovering an interactive effect of cortisol and sleep on consolidation, but also to determining a potential attentional mechanism behind this effect. Overall, this study can be used as an example of how to combine methodologies that are typically used independently in order to achieve a better understanding of complex interactions between variables that affect cognition.
The authors have nothing to disclose.
This study was supported by grant BCS-0963581 from the National Science Foundation (to EAK and JDP). The authors thank Christine Cox for her helpful discussion of the data, as well as Halle Zucker, John Morris, Christopher Stare, Sondra Corgan, and Maite Balda for their assistance with data collection. Please address correspondence to Kelly A. Bennion (kelly.bennion@bc.edu; 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston College Psychology, McGuinn 300, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467).
Salimetrics oral swabs (SOS) | Salimetrics | 5001.02 | |
Swab storage tubes (SST) | Salimetrics | 5001.05 | |
Eye-tracker | SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) | iView X Hi-Speed |