The effects of practice on the functional anatomy observed in two different tasks, a verbal and a motor task, are reviewed in this paper. In the first, people practiced a verbal production task, generating an appropriate verb in response to a visually presented noun. Both practiced and unpracticed conditions utilized common regions such as visual and motor cortex. However, there was a set of regions that was affected by practice. Practice produced a shift in activity from left frontal, anterior cingulate, and right cerebellar hemisphere to activity in Sylvian-insular cortex. Similar changes were also observed in the second task, a task in a very different domain, namely the tracing of a maze. Some areas were significantly more activated during initial unskilled performance (right premotor and parietal cortex and left cerebellar hemisphere); a different region (medial frontal cortex, ''supplementary motor area'') showed greater activity during skilled performance conditions. Activations were also found in regions that most likely control movement execution irrespective of skill level (e.g., primary motor cortex was related to velocity of movement). One way of interpreting these results is in a ''scaffolding-storage'' framework. For unskilled, effortful performance, a scaffolding set of regions is used to cope with novel task demands. Following practice, a different set of regions is used, possibly representing storage of particular associations or capabilities that allow for skilled performance. The specific regions used for scaffolding and storage appear to be task dependent. This paper describes practice-related changes in cerebral blood flow observed during procedural learning or skill acquisition. This type of learning is often gradual or iterative; in other words, skill is acquired over many trials, slowly moving toward a particular goal (1, 2). In some cases, the learning can take place with little attention directed to the learning events (3). It is ''nondeclarative'' in the sense that the person may not be able to explicate what has been learned or how, even though behavior has clearly changed over time. Neurobiologically, medial temporal lobe damage leaves this kind of learning essentially intact, but damage to other regions, such as the basal ganglia (4) and the cerebellum (5, 6), have been implicated in deficits in specific instances of nondeclarative learning.There are at least two different, but nonexclusive, ideas related to skill acquisition mechanisms. The first emphasizes that learning can take place through more efficient use of specific ''neuronal circuits.'' The idea of learning at a Hebbian synapse would be an example of this type of mechanism, where synaptic weight is strengthened when an input neuron and output neuron are active together. Some recent explications of procedural learning liken it almost to a type of high-level priming, in which existing structures are made efficient through recent use (e.g., ref. 4).The second idea emphasizes that skill acquisition goes through ''stag...

The aim of this study is to assess brain activity measured during continuous performance of design tracing tasks. Three issues were addressed: identification of brain areas involved in performing maze and square tracing tasks, investigation of differences and similarities in these areas related to dominant and nondominant hand performance, and most importantly, examination of the effects of practice in these areas. A total of 32 normal, right-handed subjects were instructed to move a pen with the dominant right hand (16 subjects) or nondominant left hand (16 subjects) continuously through cut-out maze and square patterns with their eyes closed during a 40-s positron emission tomography (PET) scan to measure regional blood flow. There were six conditions: 1) holding the pen on a writing tablet without moving it (rest condition); 2) tracing a maze without practice; 3) tracing the same maze after 10 min of practice; 4) tracing a novel maze; and tracing an easily learned square design at 5) high or 6) low speed. To identify brain areas generally related to continuous tracing, data analyses were performed on the combined data acquired during the five tracing scans minus rest conditions. Areas activated included: primary and secondary motor areas, somatosensory, parietal, and inferior frontal cortex, thalamus, and several cerebellar regions. Then comparisons were made between right- and left-hand performance. There were no significant differences in performance. As for brain activations, only primary motor cortex and anterior cerebellum showed activations that switched with hand of performance. All other areas, with the exception of the midbrain, showed activations that were common for both right- and left-hand performance. These areas were further analyzed for significant conditional effects. We found patterns of activation related to velocity in the contralateral primary motor cortex, related to unskilled performance in right premotor and parietal areas and left cerebellum, related to skilled performance in supplementary motor area (SMA), and related to the level of capacity at which subjects were performing in left premotor cortex, ipsilateral anterior cerebellum, right posterior cerebellum and right dentate nucleus. These findings demonstrate two important principles: 1) practice produces a shift in activity from one set of areas to a different area and 2) practice-related activations appeared in the same hemisphere regardless of the hand used, suggesting that some of the areas related to maze learning must code information at an abstract level that is distinct from the motor performance of the task itself.

Research has revealed that haptic perception of parallelity deviates from physical reality. Large and systematic deviations have been found in haptic parallelity matching most likely due to the influence of the hand-centered egocentric reference frame. Providing information that increases the influence of allocentric processing has been shown to improve performance on haptic matching. In this study allocentric processing was stimulated by providing informative vision in haptic matching tasks that were performed using hand- and arm-centered reference frames. Twenty blindfolded participants (ten men, ten women) explored the orientation of a reference bar with the non-dominant hand and subsequently matched (task HP) or mirrored (task HM) its orientation on a test bar with the dominant hand. Visual information was provided by means of informative vision with participants having full view of the test bar, while the reference bar was blocked from their view (task VHP). To decrease the egocentric bias of the hands, participants also performed a visual haptic parallelity drawing task (task VHPD) using an arm-centered reference frame, by drawing the orientation of the reference bar. In all tasks, the distance between and orientation of the bars were manipulated. A significant effect of task was found; performance improved from task HP, to VHP to VHPD, and HM. Significant effects of distance were found in the first three tasks, whereas orientation and gender effects were only significant in tasks HP and VHP. The results showed that stimulating allocentric processing by means of informative vision and reducing the egocentric bias by using an arm-centered reference frame led to most accurate performance on parallelity matching.

Research has shown that haptic spatial matching at intermanual distances over 60 cm is prone to large systematic errors. The error pattern has been explained by the use of reference frames intermediate between egocentric and allocentric coding. This study investigated haptic performance in near peripersonal space, i.e. at intermanual distances of 60 cm and less. Twelve blindfolded participants (six males and six females) were presented with two turn bars at equal distances from the midsagittal plane, 30 or 60 cm apart. Different orientations (vertical/horizontal or oblique) of the left bar had to be matched by adjusting the right bar to either a mirror symmetric (/ \) or parallel (/ /) position. The mirror symmetry task can in principle be performed accurately in both an egocentric and an allocentric reference frame, whereas the parallel task requires an allocentric representation. Results showed that parallel matching induced large systematic errors which increased with distance. Overall error was significantly smaller in the mirror task. The task difference also held for the vertical orientation at 60 cm distance, even though this orientation required the same response in both tasks, showing a marked effect of task instruction. In addition, men outperformed women on the parallel task. Finally, contrary to our expectations, systematic errors were found in the mirror task, predominantly at 30 cm distance. Based on these findings, we suggest that haptic performance in near peripersonal space might be dominated by different mechanisms than those which come into play at distances over 60 cm. Moreover, our results indicate that both inter-individual differences and task demands affect task performance in haptic spatial matching. Therefore, we conclude that the study of haptic spatial matching in near peripersonal space might reveal important additional constraints for the specification of adequate models of haptic spatial performance.

Skillful object manipulation requires that haptically explored spatial object characteristics like orientation be adequately represented in working memory. In the current functional magnetic resonance imaging study, healthy right-handed participants explored a bar-shaped reference object with the left hand, memorizing its orientation. After a variable delay (0.5, 5, or 10 s), participants used their right hand to match the orientation by rotating a second, identical object. In the first seconds of the delay, right sensorimotor cortex was active, whereas clusters in left anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC) (Brodmann area 10) became dominant 2 s after the end of exploration, showing sustained activity for several seconds. In contrast, left parieto-occipital cortex was involved toward the end of the delay interval. Our results indicate that a dynamic network of brain areas subserves hapticospatial information processing in the delay between haptic stimulus exploration and orientation matching. We propose that haptic sensory traces, maintained in contralateral sensorimotor cortex, are transformed into more abstract hapticospatial representations in the early delay stages. Maintenance of these representations engages aPFC and parieto-occipital cortex. Whereas aPFC possibly integrates spatial and motor components of hapticospatial working memory, parieto-occipital cortex might be involved in orientation imagery, supporting working memory, and the preparation of haptic matching.

The development of math skills is crucial for adequate functioning in academic and professional settings as well as in daily life. A factor that has been shown to negatively influence performance and acquisition of math skills is math anxiety. With the high prevalence of math anxiety in society and the long lasting effects on math performance, it is important to study the relation between math anxiety and math performance in young children. Since math anxiety is often more pronounced in women than in men, it is essential to take the effect of gender into account. While the effect of gender on the relation between math anxiety and math performance has been studied in adults and adolescents, less research has focused on children, especially children at young ages. To fill this gap, the current study examined how the relation between math anxiety and math performance differed between boys and girls in early elementary school years. Math anxiety and math performance was assessed in 124 second- and fourth-grade children (67 girls and 57 boys). Although boys and girls showed more or less equal levels of math anxiety and performed similarly at the arithmetic task, correlation analyses showed that only in girls, math anxiety significantly correlated with math performance. Analyses investigating if math anxiety moderated the effect of gender and grade on math performance revealed significant differences between boys and girls. Higher levels of math anxiety only significantly and negatively moderated math performance in girls, with the greatest effect observed in 2nd grade girls. These findings highlight the importance of taking gender differences into account when studying the effect of math anxiety. The results showed that math anxiety is already negatively linked to math performance in girls as early as second grade. The present findings emphasize the importance of the early identification and remediation of math anxiety in girls to prevent long lasting effects. Possible causes for the gender related differences will be discussed.

Neuroimaging studies have recently provided support for the existence of a human equivalent of the "mirror-neuron" system as first described in monkeys [1], involved in both the execution of movements as well as the observation and imitation of actions performed by others (e.g., [2-6]). A widely held conception concerning this system is that the understanding of observed actions is mediated by a covert simulation process [7]. In the present fMRI experiment, this simulation process was probed by asking subjects to discriminate between visually presented trajectories that either did or did not match previously performed but unseen continuous movement sequences. A specific network of learning-related premotor and parietal areas was found to be reactivated when participants were confronted with their movements' visual counterpart. Moreover, the strength of these reactivations was dependent on the observers' experience with executing the corresponding movement sequence. These findings provide further support for the emerging view that embodied simulations during action observation engage widespread activations in cortical motor regions beyond the classically defined mirror-neuron system. Furthermore, the obtained results extend previous work by showing experience-dependent perceptual modulations at the neural systems level based on nonvisual motor learning.

When making two bars haptically parallel to each other, large deviations have been observed, most likely caused by the bias of a hand-centered egocentric reference frame. A consistent finding is that women show significantly larger deviations than men when performing this task. It has been suggested that this difference might be due to the fact that women are more egocentrically oriented than men or are less efficient in overcoming the egocentric bias of the hand. If this is indeed the case, reducing the bias of the egocentric reference frame should eliminate the above-mentioned gender difference. This was investigated in the current study. Sixty participants (30 men, 30 women) were instructed to haptically match (task HP) the orientation of a test bar with the dominant hand to the orientation of a reference bar that was perceived with the non-dominant hand. In a haptic visual task (task HV), in which only the reference bar and exploring hand were out of view, no motor response was required, but participants had to “match” the perceived orientation by verbally naming the parallel orientation that was read out on a test protractor. Both females and males performed better in the HV task than in the HP task. Significant gender effects were only found in the haptic parallelity task (HP), corroborating the idea that women perform at the same level as men when the egocentric bias of the hand is reduced.