Faculty » Sara Mednick  A classic question in memory literature
is: how does the human brain learn new information while not
overwriting previously stored memories? Memory models solve this
so-called stability plasticity dilemma by proposing a post-
encoding period of reduced interference that allows the brain to
consolidate recent experience into long-term storage. A growing
body of research shows that for some types of memory,
consolidation takes place during sleep. Recent studies show that
rapid eye movement (REM) sleep enhances performance from
baseline and promotes generalization in non-declarative memory
tasks, whereas non-REM (NREM) sleep decreases forgetting from
baseline on declarative memory tasks. These different
performance profiles suggest that two different mechanisms exist
for consolidating declarative and non-declarative memories.
Declarative memory traces must be protected from interference
from other memories, whereas non-declarative memories, almost by
definition, form by association between