Abstract
There is increasing evidence supporting the notion that the contribution of sleep to consolidation of motor skills depends on the nature of the task used in practice. We compared the role of three post-training conditions in the expression of delayed gains on two different motor skill learning tasks: finger tapping sequence learning (FTSL) and visuomotor adaptation (VMA). Subjects in the DaySleep and ImmDaySleep conditions were trained in the morning and at noon, respectively, afforded a 90-min nap early in the afternoon and were re-tested 12 h post-training. In the NightSleep condition, subjects were trained in the evening on either of the two learning paradigms and re-tested 12 h later following sleep, while subjects in the NoSleep condition underwent their training session in the morning and were re-tested 12 h later without any intervening sleep. The results of the FTSL task revealed that post-training sleep (day-time nap or night-time sleep) significantly promoted the expression of delayed gains at 12 h post-training, especially if sleep was afforded immediately after training. In the VMA task, however, there were no significant differences in the gains expressed at 12 h post-training in the three conditions. These findings suggest that “off-line” performance gains reflecting consolidation processes in the FTSL task benefit from sleep, even a short nap, while the simple passage of time is as effective as time in sleep for consolidation of VMA to occur. They also imply that procedural memory consolidation processes differ depending on the nature of task demands.
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Acknowledgments
Support for this research was provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (JD, JC, AHT and AK, HB, LGU), and by a fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (AM). The authors are grateful to Sonia Frenette, the project coordinator, to Anne Bellio and Odile Jolivet for work in developing the experimental paradigm, and to our technicians and research assistants for day-to-day study management.
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J. Doyon and M. Korman contributed equally.
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Doyon, J., Korman, M., Morin, A. et al. Contribution of night and day sleep vs. simple passage of time to the consolidation of motor sequence and visuomotor adaptation learning. Exp Brain Res 195, 15–26 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009-1748-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009-1748-y