Presentation
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Intact semantic processing of a continuous narrative story during sleep
Poster B27 in Poster Session B and Reception, Thursday, October 6, 6:30 - 8:30 pm EDT, Millennium Hall
Ashwin Harimohan1, Sarah Hollywood1, Adrian M. Owen1, Bobby Stojanoski2, Laura J. Batterink1; 1Western University, 2Ontario Tech University
Sleep represents an altered state of consciousness, marked by a reversible reduction in responsiveness to the external world. Nonetheless, previous research has shown that the sleeping brain continues to monitor the environment for important salient events and to engage in surprisingly high-level cognitive processes, including semantic processing of individual words. Here, we probed the limits of the sleeping brain’s capacity for language, investigating the extent to which a naturally spoken, continuous narrative story is processed during sleep. Participants were exposed to an intact and scrambled narrative story while they either slept or lay awake. A temporal response function (TRF) mapped the relationship between participants’ EEG neural responses and the semantic dissimilarity of words within the narrative. During both wake and sleep, a TRF negativity was observed as a function of semantic dissimilarity. This negativity shared similar characteristics to the classic N400 event-related potential, a well-established marker of semantic processing. Importantly, the effect during sleep was similar to that observed during wake, but with a delayed latency. These findings suggest that the sleeping brain is capable of high-level, semantic processing of fully natural, complex narrative speech. Our results provide initial evidence that natural language processing remains remarkably intact during sleep.
Topic Areas: Speech Perception, Methods