The Origins of Anterograde Interference in Visuomotor Adaptation

Abstract

Anterograde interference refers to the negative impact of prior learning on the propensity for future learning. There is currently no consensus on whether this phenomenon is transient or long lasting, with studies pointing to an effect in the time scale of hours to days. These inconsistencies might be caused by the method employed to quantify performance, which often confounds changes in learning rate and retention. Here, we aimed to unveil the time course of anterograde interference by tracking its impact on visuomotor adaptation at different intervals throughout a 24-h period. Our empirical and model-based approaches allowed us to measure the capacity for new learning separately from the influence of a previous memory. In agreement with previous reports, we found that prior learning persistently impaired the initial level of performance upon revisiting the task. However, despite this strong initial bias, learning capacity was impaired only when conflicting information was learned up to 1 h apart, recovering thereafter with passage of time. These findings suggest that when adapting to conflicting perturbations, impairments in performance are driven by two distinct mechanisms: a long-lasting bias that acts as a prior and hinders initial performance and a short-lasting anterograde interference that originates from a reduction in error sensitivity.

Timescales of motor memory formation in dual-adaptation

“…Similar to visuomotor [ 12 ] and saccadic adaptation [ 13 ], adaptation to novel dynamics exhibits savings [ 13 – 15 ], the ability of prior learning to speed subsequent relearning, spontaneous recovery of an initially adapted state after de-adaptation [ 16 , 17 ] and interference, a conflict of adaptation between similar tasks [ 18 – 20 ]. Motor adaptation has been modelled by a two-state model with different timescales [ 16 , 21 , 22 ]. Within this framework, short-term motor memory is composed of one fast system that learns quickly but forgets quickly, and one slow system that learns slowly but retains more of the learning.…”

Acoustic stimulation increases implicit adaptation in sensorimotor adaptation

“…We extended Experiment 1 by additionally testing whether if LAS during adaptation to a first perturbation would be evident when adapting to a second, directionally opposite perturbation after an overnight period. Without the passage of time between learning the first and the second perturbation, this protocol typically results in interference in adaptation to the first perturbation to adaptation to the second perturbation (Brashers-Krug et al, 1996;Sing & Smith, 2010;Huang et al, 2011;Leow et al, 2013;Herzfeld et al, 2014;Leow et al, 2014;Leow et al, 2016;Maeda et al, 2018;Lerner et al, 2020). This anterograde interference can dissipate after washout and with the passage of time (Krakauer et al, 2005), although this pattern of time-dependent reduction in anterograde interference is not evident in all studies (Goedert & Willingham, 2002;Caithness et al, 2004;Cothros et al, 2006).…”

Local coupling between sleep spindles and slow oscillations supports the stabilization of motor memories

“…Both groups were exposed to a 30-degree optical rotation during training for about 30 minutes (Lerner et al, 2020, see Methods for details). The PLS-14h group learned the visuomotor adaptation task in the morning and then returned to the lab about 14 hours later to sleep.…”

“…In this study, we examined whether the coupling between spindles and slow oscillations supports the consolidation of human motor memories. We have recently shown evidence for the stabilization of visuomotor adaptation memories within a 6-hours period of wakefulness (Della-Maggiore et al, 2017;Albert et al, 2019;Lerner et al, 2020). We thus chose the same experimental paradigm to address whether local changes in brain activity induced by learning (Della-Maggiore et al, 2017) are further modulated by sleep.…”