Reactivation by reminder cues labilizes memories during wakefulness, requiring reconsolidation to persist. In contrast, during sleep, cued reactivation seems to directly stabilize memories. In reconsolidation, incomplete reminders are more effective in reactivating memories than complete reminders by inducing a mismatch, i.e. a discrepancy between expected and actual events. Whether mismatch is likewise detected during sleep is unclear. Here we test whether cued reactivation during sleep is more effective for mismatch-inducing incomplete than complete reminders. We first establish that only incomplete but not complete reminders labilize memories during wakefulness. When complete or incomplete reminders are presented during 40-min sleep, both reminders are equally effective in stabilizing memories. However, when extending the retention interval for another 7 hours (following 40-min sleep), only incomplete but not complete reminders stabilize memories, regardless of the extension containing wakefulness or sleep. We propose that, during sleep, only incomplete reminders initiate long-term memory stabilization via mismatch detection.

通过提醒提示重新激活会使觉醒时的记忆变得混乱，需要重新整合才能持久。相反，在睡眠期间，提示重新激活似乎可以直接稳定记忆。在重新整合中，通过引发不匹配（即预期事件与实际事件之间的差异），不完全提醒比完全提醒更有效地激活记忆。目前尚不清楚是否在睡眠期间检测到失配。在这里，我们测试了在睡眠期间提示重新激活是否比完全提醒更有效地导致失配引起的不完全。我们首先确定，只有不完整但不完整的提醒才能使清醒时的记忆丧失。当在40分钟的睡眠中出现完整或不完整的提醒时，两种提醒在稳定记忆方面都同样有效。然而，当将保留间隔再延长7个小时（在40分钟的睡眠后）时，只有不完整但不完整的提醒才能使记忆稳定，无论该扩展包含清醒还是睡眠。我们建议在睡眠期间，只有不完整的提醒才能通过失配检测来启动长期记忆稳定。