The Department of Cognitive Sciences Colloquium Series presents:  
 
"The Role of Sleep in Cognition: From Perception to Creativity"  
with Sara C. Mednick, Ph.D., Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychiatry, UC San Diego  
 
Monday, October 12, 2009  
12:00 p.m.  
Social Science Plaza A, Room 2112  
 
Abstract:  
Memory is not unified, but composed of anatomically and mechanistically distinct processes. Mednick's research examines processes that facilitate the formation of memory (i.e., sleep and pharmacology) to gain insight into its underlying mechanisms. She has found that: (1) select types of learning are facilitated during sleep, with procedural learning typically exhibiting an absolute improvement in performance and declarative memory typically exhibiting less forgetting; (2) specific sleep stages are correlated with the consolidation of procedural and declarative memories; (3) pharmacological interventions can selectively enhance or deteriorate memory performance; and (4) more experimentally tractable naps are as effective as nocturnal sleep in these memory processes. By examining when sleep and pharmacology facilitate learning, protect from interference, or have no effect on consolidation, she is able to make predictions about similarities and differences in mechanisms across these memory domains.  
 
For further information, please contact Clara Schultheiss, clara@uci.edu.