Sleep enhances memories, especially if they are related to future rewards. Although dopamine has been shown to be a key determinant during reward learning, the role of dopaminergic neurotransmission for amplifying reward-related memories during sleep remains unclear. In this study, we scrutinize the idea that dopamine is needed for the preferential consolidation of rewarded information. We impaired dopaminergic neurotransmission, thereby aiming to wipe out preferential sleep-dependent consolidation of high- over low-rewarded memories during sleep. Following a double-blind, balanced, crossover design, 17 young healthy men received the dopamine d2-like receptor blocker sulpiride (800 mg) or placebo, after learning a motivated learning task. The task required participants to memorize 80 highly and 80 lowly rewarded pictures. Half of them were presented for a short (750 msec) and a long (1500 msec) duration, respectively, which permitted dissociation of the effects of reward on sleep-associated consolidation from those of mere encoding depth. Retrieval was tested after a retention interval of approximately 22 hr that included 8 hr of nocturnal sleep. As expected, at retrieval, highly rewarded memories were remembered better than lowly rewarded memories, under placebo. However, there was no evidence for an effect of reducing dopaminergic neurotransmission with sulpiride during sleep on this differential retention of rewarded information. This result indicates that dopaminergic activation likely is not required for the preferential consolidation of reward-associated memory. Rather, it appears that dopaminergic activation only tags such memories at encoding for intensified reprocessing during sleep.

睡眠可以增强记忆力，尤其是当它们与未来的奖励有关时。尽管多巴胺已被证明是奖励学习过程中的关键决定因素，但多巴胺能神经传递在睡眠期间放大奖励相关记忆的作用仍不清楚。在这项研究中，我们仔细研究了优先整合奖励信息需要多巴胺的想法。我们损害了多巴胺能神经传递，因此旨在消除睡眠期间优先依赖睡眠的巩固高回报记忆。遵循双盲、平衡、交叉设计，17 名年轻健康男性在学习动机学习任务后接受了多巴胺 d2 样受体阻滞剂舒必利（800 毫克）或安慰剂。该任务要求参与者记住 80 张高奖励和 80 张低奖励图片。其中一半分别呈现短（750 毫秒）和长（1500 毫秒）的持续时间，这使得奖励对睡眠相关巩固的影响与单纯的编码深度的影响分离。在大约 22 小时的保留间隔（包括 8 小时的夜间睡眠）后测试检索。正如预期的那样，在检索时，在安慰剂下，高回报的记忆比低回报的记忆更容易被记住。然而，没有证据表明舒必利在睡眠期间减少多巴胺能神经传递对奖励信息的这种差异保留有影响。该结果表明，奖励相关记忆的优先巩固可能不需要多巴胺能激活。相当，