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Consolidation in human motor memory

Nature volume 382, pages 252–255 (1996)Cite this article

Abstract

LEARNING a motor skill sets in motion neural processes that continue to evolve after practice has ended, a phenomenon known as consolidation1–4. Here we present psychophysical evidence for this, and show that consolidation of a motor skill was disrupted when a second motor task was learned immediately after the first. There was no disruption if four hours elapsed between learning the two motor skills, with consolidation occuring gradually over this period. Previous studies in humans and other primates have found this time-dependent disruption of consolidation only in explicit memory tasks5–12, which rely on brain structures in the medial temporal lobe9,13,14. Our results indicate that motor memories, which do not depend on the medial temporal lobe8,15, can be transformed by a similar process of consolidation. By extending the phenomenon of consolidation to motor memory, our results indicate that distinct neural systems share similar characteristics when encoding and storing new information.

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Author notes

  1. Thomas Brashers-Krug

    Present address: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, 21287, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139, USA

    Thomas Brashers-Krug & Emilio Bizzi

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, 21205, USA

    Reza Shadmehr

Authors
  1. Thomas Brashers-Krug
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  2. Reza Shadmehr
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  3. Emilio Bizzi
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Brashers-Krug, T., Shadmehr, R. & Bizzi, E. Consolidation in human motor memory. Nature 382, 252–255 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1038/382252a0

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