Human sleep consolidates allergic responses conditioned to the environmental context of an allergen exposure

Abstract

Allergies are highly prevalent, and allergic responses can be triggered even in the absence of allergens due to Pavlovian conditioning to a specific cue. Here we show in humans suffering from allergic rhinitis that merely reencountering the environmental context in which an allergen was administered a week earlier is sufficient to trigger an allergic response—but only if participants had slept after allergen exposure. This context-conditioning effect was entirely absent when participants stayed awake the night after allergen exposure or were tested in a different context. Unlike in context conditioning, cue conditioning (to an odor stimulus) occurred independently of sleep, a differential pattern that is likewise observed for conditioning in the behavioral domain. Our findings provide evidence that allergic responses can be conditioned to contextual information alone, even after only a single-trial conditioning procedure, and that sleep is necessary to consolidate this rapidly acquired maladaptive response. The results unravel a mechanism that could explain part of the strong psychological impact on allergic responses.