The role of sleep and practice in implicit and explicit motor learning

Rieth, Cory A.; Cai, Denise J.; McDevitt, Elizabeth A.; Mednick, Sara C.

doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2010.05.052

Cited by 50 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Indeed, texture discrimination training and testing sessions entail more than 1000 trials, and performance has been shown to deteriorate if participants are retested multiple times during the day, implicating fatigue in the visual system as a critical factor in the reported pattern of performance changes (Mednick et al, 2002). Additionally, similar inhibition effects were recently discovered for motor pursuit learning (Rieth et al, in press), suggesting that confounding inhibition effects may be common in procedural tasks. Collectively, these studies further challenge the procedural memory consolidation model defined by a time-dependent stabilization and a sleep-dependent enhancement phase.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Consolidating the Effects of Waking and Sleep on Motor-Sequence Learning

Brawn¹,

Fenn²,

Nusbaum³

et al. 2010

J. Neurosci.

145

148

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sleep is widely believed to play a critical role in memory consolidation. Sleep-dependent consolidation has been studied extensively in humans using an explicit motor-sequence learning paradigm. In this task, performance has been reported to remain stable across wakefulness and improve significantly after sleep, making motor-sequence learning the definitive example of sleep-dependent enhancement. Recent work, however, has shown that enhancement disappears when the task is modified to reduce task-related inhibition that develops over a training session, thus questioning whether sleep actively consolidates motor learning. Here we use the same motorsequence task to demonstrate sleep-dependent consolidation for motor-sequence learning and explain the discrepancies in results across studies. We show that when training begins in the morning, motor-sequence performance deteriorates across wakefulness and recovers after sleep, whereas performance remains stable across both sleep and subsequent waking with evening training. This pattern of results challenges an influential model of memory consolidation defined by a time-dependent stabilization phase and a sleep-dependent enhancement phase. Moreover, the present results support a new account of the behavioral effects of waking and sleep on explicit motor-sequence learning that is consistent across a wide range of tasks. These observations indicate that current theories of memory consolidation that have been formulated to explain sleep-dependent performance enhancements are insufficient to explain the range of behavioral changes associated with sleep.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Consolidating the Effects of Waking and Sleep on Motor-Sequence Learning

Brawn¹,

Fenn²,

Nusbaum³

et al. 2010

J. Neurosci.

145

148

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Error bars represent ±1 SEM. Asterisks represent significance at P < 0.05. opportunistic manner (40), such as in times of low external input (i.e., during a quiet wake period or during sleep), as has been shown in auditory tone sequence learning (41), visual search (42), and pursuit motor tasks (43). In contrast, some nondeclarative information, such as our Primed condition here, mainly rely on sleep processes (5,44,45).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 64%

Autonomic activity during sleep predicts memory consolidation in humans

Whitehurst

Cellini

McDevitt

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Throughout history, psychologists and philosophers have proposed that good sleep benefits memory, yet current studies focusing on the relationship between traditionally reported sleep features (e.g., minutes in sleep stages) and changes in memory performance show contradictory findings. This discrepancy suggests that there are events occurring during sleep that have not yet been considered. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) shows strong variation across sleep stages. Also, increases in ANS activity during waking, as measured by heart rate variability (HRV), have been correlated with memory improvement. However, the role of ANS in sleepdependent memory consolidation has never been examined. Here, we examined whether changes in cardiac ANS activity (HRV) during a daytime nap were related to performance on two memory conditions (Primed and Repeated) and a nonmemory control condition on the Remote Associates Test. In line with prior studies, we found sleep-dependent improvement in the Primed condition compared with the Quiet Wake control condition. Using regression analyses, we compared the proportion of variance in performance associated with traditionally reported sleep features (model 1) vs. sleep features and HRV during sleep (model 2). For both the Primed and Repeated conditions, model 2 (sleep + HRV) predicted performance significantly better (73% and 58% of variance explained, respectively) compared with model 1 (sleep only, 46% and 26% of variance explained, respectively). These findings present the first evidence, to our knowledge, that ANS activity may be one potential mechanism driving sleep-dependent plasticity.sleep | heart rate variability | memory | consolidation | vagal activity S leep has been shown to facilitate the transformation of recent experiences into stable, long-term memories (i.e., consolidation), and specific electrophysiological sleep features have been implicated in this process (1). For example, minutes spent in slow wave sleep (SWS) and the number of sleep spindles [transient neural events in nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, 12-15 Hz] in a posttraining sleep period correlate with the magnitude of explicit memory improvement [e.g., conscious, episodic memories (2, 3)]. Minutes in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, on the other hand, are associated with improvements in implicit memory [e.g., unconscious, priming, procedural skills (4, 5)]. However, recent reviews and meta-analyses of the literature report inconsistencies in these findings (6, 7), suggesting that there may be unexplored factors critical to sleep-dependent memory consolidation.One possible influence that has received little attention in the sleep and memory literature is the autonomic nervous system (ANS). This lack of attention is somewhat surprising, considering that the literature describing ANS modulation of memory during wake is well established (8). Studies have found that memory storage of new information can be enhanced or impaired by directly modifying the activity of peripheral hormones following acquisition (9...

show abstract

“…Similar improvements in procedural memory over sleep have been observed for a number of other tasks, e.g., visual texture discrimination, finger sequence tapping, or mirror tracing. It has been suggested that sleep enhances performance either by actively supporting consolidation of memory traces associated with the task or by removing training-related fatigue [34]–[37]. Second, there was an additional advantage for repeated over non-repeated target-distractor configurations, which was also larger in the nap than rest group.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sleep-Effects on Implicit and Explicit Memory in Repeated Visual Search

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In repeated visual search tasks, facilitation of reaction times (RTs) due to repetition of the spatial arrangement of items occurs independently of RT facilitation due to improvements in general task performance. Whereas the latter represents typical procedural learning, the former is a kind of implicit memory that depends on the medial temporal lobe (MTL) memory system and is impaired in patients with amnesia. A third type of memory that develops during visual search is the observers’ explicit knowledge of repeated displays. Here, we used a visual search task to investigate whether procedural memory, implicit contextual cueing, and explicit knowledge of repeated configurations, which all arise independently from the same set of stimuli, are influenced by sleep. Observers participated in two experimental sessions, separated by either a nap or a controlled rest period. In each of the two sessions, they performed a visual search task in combination with an explicit recognition task. We found that (1) across sessions, MTL-independent procedural learning was more pronounced for the nap than rest group. This confirms earlier findings, albeit from different motor and perceptual tasks, showing that procedural memory can benefit from sleep. (2) Likewise, the sleep group compared with the rest group showed enhanced context-dependent configural learning in the second session. This is a novel finding, indicating that the MTL-dependent, implicit memory underlying contextual cueing is also sleep-dependent. (3) By contrast, sleep and wake groups displayed equivalent improvements in explicit recognition memory in the second session. Overall, the current study shows that sleep affects MTL-dependent as well as MTL-independent memory, but it affects different, albeit simultaneously acquired, forms of MTL-dependent memory differentially.

show abstract

The role of sleep and practice in implicit and explicit motor learning

Cited by 50 publications

References 29 publications

Consolidating the Effects of Waking and Sleep on Motor-Sequence Learning

Consolidating the Effects of Waking and Sleep on Motor-Sequence Learning

Autonomic activity during sleep predicts memory consolidation in humans

Sleep-Effects on Implicit and Explicit Memory in Repeated Visual Search

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About