Temporal proximity to sleep determines emotional memory interference
Yan Cheuk Tsang, Tao Xia, William Leung, Xiaoqing Hu · 2026
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Description
Yan Cheuk Tsang, Tao Xia, William Leung, and Xiaoqing Hu study how sleep orders mixed memories in a 2026 paper. One cue can be tied to a good event at one time and a bad event at another. Sleep is known to favor recent experience, but its pull on such clashing pairs was unclear.
One hundred twenty volunteers learned word-picture pairs where the same cue met a pleasant picture and an unpleasant one, in both orders. Half then slept overnight; half stayed awake by day. After sleep, cues leaned toward whichever feeling came second, closer to bedtime. Wakefulness showed no such lean. Memory for the pairs themselves did not explain the shift, so sleep seems to tune feeling apart from fact.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yan Cheuk Tsang, Tao Xia, William Leung, Xiaoqing Hu |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 44 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |