The purpose of this study was to determine whether exposure to specific auditory sequences leads to the induction of new motor memories and to investigate the role of the dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC) in this crossmodal learning process. Fifty-two young healthy non-musicians were familiarized with the sound to key-press mapping on a computer keyboard and tested on their baseline motor performan...

Introduction: Based on the literature, unihemispheric concurrent dual-site anodal transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (a-tDCSUHCDS) of primary Motor cortex (M1) and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) would be more efficient than conventional a-tDCS of M1 to induce larger and longer-lasting M1 corticospinal excitability. The main objective of the present study was to compare the effects ...

Thirty-six participants practiced a task in which they continuously cycled through a fixed series of nine keypresses, each carried out by a single finger (cf. Keele & Summers, 1976). The results of the first experimental phase, the practice phase, support the notion that pauses between successive keypresses at fixed locations induces the development of integrated sequence representations (i.e.,...

It has become widely accepted that sleep-dependent consolidation occurs for motor sequence learning based on studies using finger-tapping tasks. Studies using another motor sequence learning task [the serial response time task (SRTT)] have portrayed a more nuanced picture of off-line consolidation, involving both sleep-dependent and daytime consolidation, as well as modifying influences of expl...

A key problem in reinforcement learning is how an animal is able to learn a sequence of movements when the reward signal only occurs at the end of the sequence. We describe how a hierarchical dynamical model of motor function is able to solve the problem of delayed reward in learning movement sequences using associative (Hebbian) learning. At the lowest level, the motor system encodes simple mo...

Objectives: Parkinson’s disease (PD) has been associated with impaired motor sequence learning (also known as procedural learning). In the current study, we determined the potential of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation delivered over the primary motor cortex to promote the acquisition of sequential movement in a large sample of patients with idiopathic PD and matched controls. Meth...

Visual and motor coordinate systems have different computational advantages for motor sequence. This paper proposes that the multiple loops that link the basal ganglia (BG) and frontal cortical areas take their different advantages and specialize in acquisition and execution of visuomotor sequence. The central idea of the model is that a visuomotor sequence is easier to learn by visual coordina...

Recent data suggest that the Val66Met polymorphism of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene can alter cortical plasticity within the motor cortex of carriers, which exhibits abnormally low rates of cortical reorganization after repetitive motor tasks. To verify whether long-term retention of a motor skill is also modulated by the presence of the polymorphism, 20 participants (10 Val...