Research activities

The Sleep & Cognition Lab explores the mysteries of the sleeping brain using advanced neuroimaging (fMRI, hd-EEG, MEG), behavioural testing, and computational modelling, in combination with experimental approaches aiming at modifying sleep and related cognitive/affective processes.

Our research is structured around three main axes:

1. Investigating Core Cognitive and Affective Functions during Sleep

We study the neural mechanisms underlying key cognitive functions during sleep:

• Memory consolidation: e.g., How sleep stabilizes and reorganizes memory traces, including via neural replay.
• Emotion and salience: e.g., How emotional and motivational relevance biases memory reprocessing during sleep.
• Dreaming: What are the neural and cognitive bases of dreams.
• Creativity: How sleep favours creative insights.

2. Improving Sleep & Dreams: From Neural Entrainment to Clinical Applications

We design and test interventions to enhance sleep:

• Neuronal entrainment: Using sensory (e.g., vestibular stimulation using a rocking bed) to deepen sleep and enhance memory.
• Workshops and applied interventions: Programs tailored to different populations (e.g., adolescents, athletes) aiming at improving sleep and waking performance.
• Clinical applications: Techniques like imagery rehearsal therapy (IRT), targeted memory reactivation (TMR), slow wave suppression, and pharmacological interventions to understand and improve sleep in psychiatric and neurological disorders.

3. Exploring New Measures of Sleep

We develop new ways to monitor and interpret sleep-related processes:

• Physiological markers: Exploring metrics like pupil size as real-time indicators of arousal during wakefulness and across sleep stages.
• Brain-body coupling: Investigating the coupling between the brain and bodily signals (e.g., heart rate and breathing), and its impact on the processing of external stimuli during sleep.

Ongoing collaborations

We work across disciplines — neuroscience, psychiatry, linguistics, computational modelling — with collaborators such as:

• Jean-Baptiste Beau, head of Oniri (Lucid dreaming, Dream database)
• Pr. Olaf Blanke (Consciousness, Self-embodiment)
• Pr. Corrado Corradi-Dell’Acqua (Emotion & Salience)
• Dr. PD. Marzia De Lucia (Brain-body coupling, Consciousness)
• Pr. Daniel Huber (Animal models, Motor control)
• Pr. Karim Jerbi (Creativity, Brain networks)
• Pr. Nina Kazanina (Language & Cognition)
• Pr. Marina Laganaro (Speech, Neurodevelopment)
• Pr. Pierre Mégevand (Epilepsy, Intracranial recordings)
• Pr. Christoph Nissen (Sleep, Psychiatry)
• Dr. DR2. Delphine Oudiette (Cognition, Narcolepsy)
• Pr. Lampros Perogamvros (Dream analysis, Psychiatry)
• Pr. Dimitri Van De Ville (Signal processing, Computational modelling)

Contact

Faculté de médecine
Université de Genève
Email: Sophie.Schwartz@unige.ch