Rapid eye movement sleep deprivation does not affect fear memory reconsolidation in rats

There is increasing evidence that sleep may be involved in memory consolidation. However, there remain comparatively few studies that have explored the relationship between sleep and memory reconsolidation. At present study, we tested the effects of rapid eye movement sleep deprivation (RSD) on the reconsolidation of cued (experiment 1) and contextual (experiment 2) fear memory in rats. Behaviour procedure involved four training phases: habituation, fear conditioning, reactivation and test. Rats were subjected to 6 h RSD starting either immediately after reactivation or 6 h later. The control rats were returned to their home cages immediately after reactivation and left undisturbed. Contrary to those hypotheses speculating a potential role of sleep in reconsolidation, we found that post-reactivation RSD whether from 0 to 6 h or 6 to 12 h had no effect on the reconsolidation of both cued and contextual fear memory. However, our present results did not exclude the potential roles of non-rapid eye movement sleep in the reconsolidation of fear memory or sleep in the reconsolidation of other memory paradigms.