Selective preservation of prediction-related signals in human sleep.
Current biology : CB May 5, 2025 Pavlos I Topalidis, Gianpaolo Demarchi, Lisa Reisinger et al. 1 citation
During sleep, the brain retains the ability to preactivate representations of specific sound features, such as tone frequency, but loses the capacity to track higher-order statistical associations between sounds. Using EEG and MEG with multivariate pattern analysis, the study compared brain responses to predictable and random tone sequences during wakefulness and sleep. Feature-specific responses to subtle tone changes were present in N1 and N2 sleep, though weaker than when awake. The brain preactivated feature-specific representations during sleep, but tracking of statistical associations between tones occurred only during wakefulness. This suggests that while some automatic predictive processing of low-level features persists, higher-order anticipation of patterns is disrupted when consciousness fades.