Unwanted memories often enter conscious awareness when individuals confront reminders. People vary widely in their talents at suppressing such memory intrusions; however, the factors that govern suppression ability are poorly understood. We tested the hypothesis that successful memory control requires sleep. Following overnight sleep or total sleep deprivation, participants attempted to suppress intrusions of emotionally negative and neutral scenes when confronted with reminders. The sleep-deprived group experienced significantly more intrusions (unsuccessful suppressions) than the sleep group. Deficient control over intrusive thoughts had consequences: Whereas in rested participants suppression reduced behavioral and psychophysiological indices of negative affect for aversive memories, it had no such salutary effect for sleep-deprived participants. Our findings raise the possibility that sleep deprivation disrupts prefrontal control over medial temporal lobe structures that support memory and emotion. These data point to an important role of sleep disturbance in maintaining and exacerbating psychiatric conditions characterized by persistent, unwanted thoughts.

中文翻译：

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失去控制：睡眠不足会影响对不想要的想法的抑制

当个人面对提醒时，不需要的记忆通常会进入有意识的意识。人们在抑制这种记忆入侵方面的才能差异很大。然而，人们对控制抑制能力的因素知之甚少。我们测试了成功的记忆控制需要睡眠的假设。在整夜睡眠或完全睡眠剥夺后，参与者在面对提醒时试图抑制情绪消极和中性场景的侵入。睡眠剥夺组比睡眠组经历了明显更多的入侵（不成功的抑制）。对侵入性想法的控制不足会产生后果：而在休息的参与者中，抑制会降低对厌恶记忆的负面影响的行为和心理生理指标，它对睡眠不足的参与者没有这种有益的影响。我们的研究结果提出了一种可能性，即睡眠剥夺会破坏前额叶对支持记忆和情绪的内侧颞叶结构的控制。这些数据表明，睡眠障碍在维持和恶化以持续、不想要的想法为特征的精神疾病方面起着重要作用。