Improved motoric memory consolidation The effect of positive feedback on motoric memory

Abstract

Motor memory is an essential part of everyday life and essential for learning and retaining motor skills such as playing computer games, piano, driving a car and dancing. Difficulties executing motor movements can have a significant impact on daily functioning. The exact mechanisms underlying the formation of new motor memory is not entirely clear, and with this study, we want to further develop our knowledge of how the motor memories are created. Converging evidence that sleep plays a significant role in motor memory learning is already widely accepted, but there are still questions on which aspects of motor learning that are influenced by sleep, and what aspects of learning that could improve motor performance. Therefore, by using a motor sequence test for finger skills, we aimed to examine how positive feedback and sleep affect motoric memory consolidation compared to wakefulness. In addition, we studied if there were any gender differences in motor learning, as this has not been vastly researched. Usually, memory studies only carry out retrieval tests after a shorter period, a few hours to a day after initial learning. Retention of motor memories for a longer period which is highly relevant in daily life has rarely been studied, and therefore this study also examined how stable the learned motor memories were after four weeks.