There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
It is widely believed that memories that are encoded and retrieved during waking behavior
are consolidated during sleep. Recent studies on the interactions between the hippocampus
and the prefrontal cortex have greatly advanced our understanding of the physiological
bases of these memory processes. Although hippocampal-prefrontal network activity
differs in many aspects during waking and sleep states, here we review evidence that
hippocampal sharp-wave ripples (SWRs) emerge as a common neurophysiological pattern
in both states, facilitating communication between these two regions via coordinated
reactivation of stored memory information. We further consider whether sleep and awake
reactivation mediate similar memory processes or have different mnemonic functions,
and the mechanistic role of this cross-regional dialogue in learning and memory. Finally,
we provide an integrated view of how these two forms of reactivation might work together
to support spatial learning and memory.