Effect and underlying mechanism of obstructive sleep apnea on memory consolidation

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the research progress on the effects of obstructive sleep apnea （OSA） on memory consolidation， and to speculate on possible mechanisms underlying these effects， so as to inform the exploration of effective therapeutic measures for impaired memory consolidation. Previous studies have shown that mild OSA may impair different types of memory consolidation， and the impairments are closely related to certain indices of polysomnography （such as sleep microstructure， apnea hypopnea index， arousal index， etc）. Therefore， it is hypothesized that disruption of sleep architecture and damage to brain regions and neural pathways associated with sleep-dependent memory consolidation due to intermittent hypoxia may trigger a decline in memory consolidation. Meantime， long-term continuous positive airway pressure can alleviate the impairment of memory consolidation induced by OSA， but whether other interventions can mitigate the damage remains unclear.

Keywords

• obstructive sleep apnea
• declarative memory consolidation
• procedural memory consolidation
• sleep structure