Sleep supports the formation of a variety of declarative and non-declarative memories, and sleep deprivation often impairs these types of memories. In human subjects, natural sleep either during a nap or overnight leads to long-lasting improvements in visuomotor and fine motor tasks, but rodent models recapitulating these findings have been scarce. Here we present evidence that 5 h of acute sleep deprivation impairs mouse skilled reach learning compared to a matched period of ad libitum sleep. In sleeping mice, the duration of total sleep time during the 5 h of sleep opportunity or during the first bout of sleep did not correlate with ultimate gain in motor performance. In addition, we observed that reversal learning during the skilled reaching task was also affected by sleep deprivation. Consistent with this observation, 5 h of sleep deprivation also impaired reversal learning in the water-based Y-maze. In conclusion, acute sleep deprivation negatively impacts subsequent motor and reversal learning and memory.
Mounting evidence supports a role for sleep in both declarative and non-declarative forms of learning and memory (Diekelmann and Born, 2010 and Havekes et al., 2012). In human subjects, one of the most robust and reproducible benefits of sleep has been observed with improved motor performance as assessed through a finger tap motor sequence test (MST) (Fischer et al., 2002 and Walker et al., 2002). In addition, a greater benefit of sleep was appreciated with increasing complexity of the MST (Kuriyama, Stickgold, & Walker, 2004). Disruption of sleep as a consequence of obstructive sleep apnea is associated with deficits in MST performance (Djonlagic, Saboisky, Carusona, Stickgold, & Malhotra, 2012) and in motor cortex plasticity induced by theta burst stimulation (Opie, Catcheside, Usmani, Ridding, & Semmler, 2013). Anatomically, performance of a MST after sleep preferentially activated the contralateral primary motor cortex, medial prefrontal lobe, hippocampus, and ipsilateral cerebellum (Walker, Stickgold, Alsop, Gaab, & Schlaug, 2005).
