Neural ensemble reactivation in REM and SWS coordinate with muscle activity to promote rapid motor skill learning

Neural activity patterns of recent experiences are reactivated during sleep in structures critical for memory storage, including hippocampus and neocortex. This reactivation process is thought to aid memory consolidation. Although synaptic rearrangement dynamics following learning involve an interplay between slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye movement sleep (REM), most physiological evidence implicates SWS directly following experience as a preferred window for reactivation. Here we show that reactivation occurs in both REM and SWS, and that coordination of REM and SWS activation on the same day is associated with rapid learning of a motor skill. We performed 6-hour recordings from cells in rats’ motor cortex as they were trained daily on a skilled reaching task. In addition to SWS following training, reactivation occurred in REM, primarily during the pre-task rest period, and REM and SWS reactivation occurred on the same day in rats that acquired the skill rapidly. Both pre-task REM ...