Born, J. .
Universität Tübingen, Germany
I will present data from studies in humans and rats supporting the following conclusions: (1) Sleep consolidates memory. (2) Consolidation during sleep preferentially benefits hippocampus-dependent declarative memory. (3) Memory consolidation during sleep is caused by neuronal reactivations of newly encoded representations and (4) goes along with a qualitative transformation of the memory representation. (5) Memory reactivation and transformation during sleep take place during slow wave sleep, probably under the control of the EEG slow oscillation hallmarking this sleep stage. Altogether the findings will be taken to propose the model of an ?active system consolidation? during sleep. In this process the neocortical slow oscillation drives the repeated neuronal reactivation of newly encoded hippocampal memory whereby respective representations are redistributed, preferentially towards neocortical networks serving as long term store.