Abstract
Perceptual learning is an important form of memory in which our ability to distinguish visual forms improves with experience, and is usually thought to reflect plasticity in the visual cortex. Sleep, known to be important in hippocampal memories, has recently been suggested to be important in perceptual learning, implicating the hippocampus as well as the cortex. This projects aims to test the hypothesis that hippocampal activity contributes to visual cortical plasticity and perceptual learning, by studying the influence of sleep on perceptual learning with visual psychophysical measurements in humans, and electrophysiological measurements in rodents.
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