Editorial: Mechanisms contributing to sleep-dependent memory generalization

Contemporary research of sleep in humans and animals repeatedly show its involvement in memory consolidation (Rasch and Born, 2013). While early studies in the field were mostly concerned with the way sleep strengthens existing memories and skills (e.g., Plihal and Born, 1997), it has since become clear that sleep—particularly sleep stages known collectively as non-Rapid-Eye-Movement (non-REM) sleep—play an important role in the generalization of experience to new circumstances, including gist learning, extraction of regularities, and the development of insight into hidden patterns. The extent of these effects has nevertheless become the issue of extensive debates in the field, with questions raised regarding the conditions that allow sleep-dependent generalization to emerge, the neural mechanisms supporting it, and even how robust the effects really are (e.g., Cordi and Rasch, 2021). The current Research Topic presents studies that directly tackle some of these core questions.