Sleep and Memory Consolidation: A Common Mechanism Across Species?  Frighetto, N Cellini - Journal of Neurophysiology, 2016

In humans, memory consolidation can be aided by the representation of an odor previously
associated with target information during sleep. In an elegant study, Zwaka and colleagues have
demonstrated that the same process occurs in honeybees, suggesting that the relationship between
sleep and memory may be similar across different animal species.

Overall, they showed that re-exposing honeybees during deep-sleep to a context odor improves
memory of the odor-paired material. They demonstrated that this effect is specific to deep sleep and
does not occur during wake or other sleep phases. Furthermore, they showed that this effect may
extend to the consolidation of “weak” memories (i.e., memory based on single-conditioning trials),
which are usually quickly forgotten (Müller 2012).

Honeybees show complex behavioral correlates of sleep that have functional
equivalent in mammals, humans included. For instance, in honeybees three different sleep stages
can be distinguished by using behavioral criteria (i.e., antennal movements, body posture, sleep
bout duration, and response threshold) and the absolute immobility of their antennae is considered a
sign of deep sleep, equivalent to humans non-REM (NREM) sleep slow wave sleep stage

Notably, these results are consistent with findings in humans. Indeed, it has been shown in
humans that matching a olfactory stimulus with target information (e.g., pairs of words, objects,
motor sequences), and then re-present the odor alone during sleep, facilitates memory consolidation.

* * *

To sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

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