Improvement in motor skill performance is known to continue for at least 24 hr following training, yet the relative contributions of time spent awake and asleep are unknown. Here we provide evidence that a night of sleep results in a 20% increase in motor speed without loss of accuracy, while an equivalent period of time during wake provides no significant benefit. Furthermore, a significant co...

Skilled performers exhibit more efficient gaze patterns than less-skilled counterparts do and they look more frequently at task-relevant regions than at superfluous ones. We examine whether we may guide novices' gaze towards relevant regions during action observation in order to facilitate their learning of a complex motor skill. In a Pre-test-Post-test examination of changes in their execution...

Little is known about how obesity relates to motor planning and skills during functional tasks. We collected 3-D kinematics and kinetics as normal weight (n=10) and overweight/obese (n=12) children walked on flat ground and as they crossed low, medium, and high obstacles. We investigated if motor planning and motor skill impairments were evident during obstacle crossing. Baseline conditions sho...

BACKGROUND Abnormal hip mechanics are often implicated in female runners with patellofemoral pain. We sought to evaluate a simple gait retraining technique, using a full-length mirror, in female runners with patellofemoral pain and abnormal hip mechanics. Transfer of the new motor skill to the untrained tasks of single leg squat and step descent was also evaluated. METHODS Ten female runners ...

After a memory is formed, it continues to be processed by the brain. These "off-line" processes consolidate the memory, leading to its enhancement and to changes in memory circuits. Potentially, these memory changes are driven by off-line replay of the pattern of neuronal activity present when the memory was being formed. A new study by Dhaksin Ramanathan and colleagues, published in PLOS Biolo...

Appropriate inhibitory response control is associated with goal-directed behavior. Sleep accelerates the offline consolidation of acquired motor skills that are explicitly predictable; however, the effect of sleep on implicit (unpredictable) motor skills remains controversial. We speculated that a key component of response inhibition skill differentiates between these skill consolidation proper...

Movements are the main measurable output of central nervous system function. Developing behavioral paradigms that allow detailed analysis of motor learning and execution is of critical importance in order to understand the principles and processes that underlie motor function. Here we present a paradigm to study movement acquisition within a daily session of training (within-session) representi...

Positive feedback or experiences of success during skill acquisition have been shown to benefit motor skill learning. In this study, our aim was to manipulate learners' success perceptions through a minor adjustment to goal criterion (target size) in a dart-throwing task. Two groups of novice participants practiced throwing at a large (easy) or a small (difficult) target from the same distance....

Recent studies suggest that a night of sleep may play a similar functional role following motor imagery (MI) practice. Here we examined whether offline gains following MI of a finger tapping sequence depends on the degree of complexity of the motor sequence, and whether this improvement differentially affects the individual transitions of the motor-sequence pattern being learned. The data revea...

Are children superior to adults in consolidating procedural memory? This notion has been tied to "critical," early life periods of increased brain plasticity. Here, using a motor sequence learning task, we show, in experiment 1, that a) the rate of learning during a training session, b) the gains accrued, without additional practice, within a 24 hours post-training interval (delayed consolidati...