Rats implanted with electrodes for state scoring and hippocampal unit activity were trained on the Poe 8-box spatial learning task. After daily training, animals were restricted from REM sleep for 4 h by gently touching the rat after a 5 s sweep of clear REM. In the subsequent 4 h auditory stimulation (80 dB 2 KHz clicks, 0.5 Hz) was begun after 20 s of clear REM and for the duration of the REM period. REM deprivation is known to impair spatial learning. Auditory stimulation to increase REM duration facilitates spatial learning (Bjorness & Poe, SFN 2003). We tested the hypothesis that auditory stimulation delivered after REM deprivation would result in normal learning, i.e., the auditory stimulation would prevent/reverse deprivation induced learning impairments. Preliminary data from 2 rats show that animals deprived of REM sleep and exposed to auditory stimulation exhibited normal learning (Fig 1). Consistent with other results using this task, animals showed peak improvement between days 1, 2 & 3, with l...