See monthly calendar for regularly scheduled events.

TFASS
Thursday, April 3, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Masako Tamaki, Ph.D.
Team Leader, Cognitive Somnology RIKEN Hakubi Research Team Cluster for Pioneering Research / Center for Brain Science
Topic: Neurochemical and behavioral changes during sleep for learning and memory
Sleep is crucial for the continuity and development of life. Sleep-related problems can alter brain function and cause potentially severe psychological and behavioral consequences. However, the role of sleep in our mind and behavior is far from clear. In this talk, I will demonstrate how the sequence of nonrapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep influences learning in humans. We have previously found that visual learning is stabilized by REM sleep that follows NREM sleep. By measuring neurochemical changes in the visual areas, we found that the excitation/inhibition (E/I) balance, which represents the amount of plasticity, increased during NREM sleep and decreased during REM sleep. The E/I balance during NREM sleep was correlated with performance improvements, while the E/I balance during REM sleep was correlated with stabilization of learning. Furthermore, our recent results show that the first-night effect (FNE), a temporary sleep disturbance that occurs in a new environment, significantly impairs learning and alters the E/I balance changes. Thus, NREM and REM sleep play complementary roles for learning, reflected by significantly different neurochemical processing, and the quality of sleep matters for these processes to occur.

TFASS
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Kate Simon, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, University of California, Irvine
Topic: Monitoring Minds: Remote Tracking of Preadolescent Sleep, Cognition, and Mental Health


TFASS
Tuesday, May 20, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Anastacia Y. Kudinova, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University and Bradley Hospital
Topic: To Be Announced