Recently, Boyd and Winstein tested three groups of individuals with damage to unilateral sensorimotor areas on a version of the serial reaction time task performed with the ipsilesional hand. Only when the individuals were provided in advance with explicit knowledge of the motor sequence were they able to benefit behaviorally from the sequence. Despite aspects of the experimental procedure and ...

Improvements in motor sequence performance have been observed after a delay involving sleep. This finding has been taken as evidence for an active sleep consolidation process that enhances subsequent performance. In a review of this literature, however, the authors observed 4 aspects of data analyses and experimental design that could lead to improved performance on the test in the absence of a...

Motor skill learning may involve training a neural system to automatically perform sequences of movements, with the training signals provided by a different system, used mainly during training to perform the movements, that operates under visual sensory guidance. We use a dynamical systems perspective to show how complex motor sequences could be learned by the automatic system. The network uses...

A broad range of motor skills, such as speech and writing, evolves with the ability to articulate elementary motor movements into novel sequences that come to be performed smoothly through practice. Neuroimaging studies in humans have demonstrated the involvement of the cerebello-cortical and striato-cortical motor loops in the course of motor sequence learning. Nonetheless, the nature of the i...

Brain imaging studies demonstrate increasing activity in limb motor areas during early motor skill learning, consistent with functional reorganization occurring at the motor output level. Nevertheless, behavioral studies reveal that visually guided skills can also be learned with respect to target location or possibly eye movements. The current experiments examined motor learning under compatib...

Although implicit motor sequence learning is rather well understood in young adults, effects of aging on this kind of learning are controversial. There is first evidence that working memory (WM) might play a role in implicit motor sequence learning in young adults as well as in adults above the age of 65. However, the knowledge about the development of these processes across the adult life span...

Long-term intensive sensorimotor training alters functional representation of the motor and sensory system and might even result in structural changes. However, there is not much knowledge about how previous training impacts learning transfer and functional representation. We tested 14 amateur pianists and 15 musically naïve participants in a shortterm finger sequence training procedure, differ...

Motor sequence learning on the serial reaction time task involves the integration of response-, stimulus-, and effector-based information. Human primary motor cortex (M1) and the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) have been identified with supporting the learning of effector-dependent and -independent information, respectively. Current neurocognitive data are, however, exclusively based on learning...

Long-term intensive sensorimotor training alters functional representation of the motor and sensory system and might even result in structural changes. However, there is not much knowledge about how previous training impacts learning transfer and functional representation. We tested 14 amateur pianists and 15 musically naïve participants in a short-term finger sequence training procedure, diffe...