Starving for Memory - Consolidation Independent of Sleep

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Jan Born
• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551073620

Research of the last two decades, including my own, has substantiated a central role of sleep in the formation of long-term memory. Yet, is sleep really decisive for long-term memory formation? Although rare, there is evidence that long-term memory may also be formed in the absence of sleep, and such sleep-independent memory consolidation seems to be enhanced by organismic needs like hunger. Indeed, consolidation processes that are driven by needs and are independent of sleep, might represent an adaptive advantage to the organism when, for example, during the search for food, starvation supports the formation of persisting memories of the environmental search context. With this project, I want to show, for the first time in the mammalian brain, that starvation consolidates memory and how it does so. Using a combined human/rodent approach, the project shall specify the conditions and underlying neuronal mechanisms of a starvation-driven memory consolidation process. Specifically, the experiments shall determine the potential dependency of the consolidation process on the task stimuli (food-related vs. unrelated), the persistence of the consolidated memory, and the dependence of its retrieval on external (spatial) and internal (needs) context aspects. Rodent models (rats, mice) will be used to identify the neuronal circuits underlying starvation-driven memory consolidation. In particular, it shall be tested to which extent starvation-driven consolidation is evoked by a memory "replay", i.e., the post-encoding reactivation of neuropeptidergic (NPY, MCH) neuron ensembles that are located in hypothalamic feeding circuits. Finally, it shall be examined whether and how such hypothalamus-driven consolidation interacts with hippocampus-driven consolidation processes established during sleep. The findings shall ultimately provide the basis for an overarching concept on how organismic need states and sleep synergize to form long-term memory.

• DFG Programme: Reinhart Koselleck Projects