Declarative and Procedural Learning in Stroke, Parkinson's Disease and Sleep Apnea

Introduction: Both declarative and procedural learning show significant benefits from sleep in healthy people. We were interested in challenging this finding in those patients displaying structural damages to cerebral areas important for declarative memory (temporal lesions due to stroke, n=10) or non-declarative memory (diencephalic lesions due to Parkinson's disease, n=10) or chronic hypoxemic damage due to untreated sleep apnea (AHI >25/h, n=17). The investigations of healthy controls paralleled those of patients. Methods: Daytime learning over 30min, and 12 hours (from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.) was compared intraind…