Neuroscience
If you are learning a skill such as playing the piano, you have to master the fact-based aspect (the sequence of notes) and also the movement-related aspect (moving your fingers in the correct way on the keys). Both aspects improve during practice, but only one continues to improve afterwards, as what you’ve learned is consolidated in your brain. Now researchers have found that which aspect this is depends on whether it’s night or day.
Daniel Cohen and colleagues at Harvard Medical School investigated these two aspects of learning by asking 50 participants to learn a sequence of key presses with their right hand. They then asked the participants to switch hands. For some of the participants the key sequence stayed the same but because they were now using a different hand, they obviously had to learn a different order of finger movements (see Figure). For the other participants, the sequence was mirror-reversed so they obviously had to learn a new sequence, but because they had switched hands, the order of the finger movements was actually same (see Figure). This procedure allowed the researchers to disentangle the fact-based and movement-based aspects of learning a motor skill. Some of the participants completed this initial part of the experiment in the morning, others in the evening.
Twelve hours later the participants were tested again. Of those participants who had to learn new finger movements, only those originally tested in the morning showed evidence of improvement. By contrast, of those who had to learn a new key-press sequence, only those who were previously tested in the evening and had therefore since slept, showed any sign of improvement.
The researchers said “We found that goal-based [i.e. fact-based] improvements developed exclusively overnight, whereas movement-based improvements developed exclusively over the day”.
“This deepens our understanding of [skill] consolidation by showing that off-line skill enhancement depends on multiple distinct processes that are preferentially engaged depending on when consolidation takes place”, they concluded.
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Cohen, D.A., Leone, A-P., Press, D.Z. & Robertson, E.M. (2005). Off-line learning of motor skill memory: A double dissociation of goal and movement. In Press, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0506072102.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Different kinds of learning occur during night and day
If you are learning a skill such as playing the piano, you have to master the fact-based aspect (the sequence of notes) and also the movement-related aspect (moving your fingers in the correct way on the keys). Both aspects improve during practice, but only one continues to improve afterwards, as what you’ve learned is consolidated in your brain. Now researchers have found that which aspect this is depends on whether it’s night or day.Daniel Cohen and colleagues at Harvard Medical School investigated these two aspects of learning by asking 50 participants to learn a sequence of key presses with their right hand. They then asked the participants to switch hands. For some of the participants the key sequence stayed the same but because they were now using a different hand, they obviously had to learn a different order of finger movements (see Figure). For the other participants, the sequence was mirror-reversed so they obviously had to learn a new sequence, but because they had switched hands, the order of the finger movements was actually same (see Figure). This procedure allowed the researchers to disentangle the fact-based and movement-based aspects of learning a motor skill. Some of the participants completed this initial part of the experiment in the morning, others in the evening.
Twelve hours later the participants were tested again. Of those participants who had to learn new finger movements, only those originally tested in the morning showed evidence of improvement. By contrast, of those who had to learn a new key-press sequence, only those who were previously tested in the evening and had therefore since slept, showed any sign of improvement.
The researchers said “We found that goal-based [i.e. fact-based] improvements developed exclusively overnight, whereas movement-based improvements developed exclusively over the day”.
“This deepens our understanding of [skill] consolidation by showing that off-line skill enhancement depends on multiple distinct processes that are preferentially engaged depending on when consolidation takes place”, they concluded.
__________________________________
Cohen, D.A., Leone, A-P., Press, D.Z. & Robertson, E.M. (2005). Off-line learning of motor skill memory: A double dissociation of goal and movement. In Press, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0506072102.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Link to related review article
- Why Teens Should Have Their Music And Sports Lessons In The Evening
While you sleep your brain learns. Research with rats has shown how they rehearse maze-routes in their brains whilst they're dozing. And human research has demonstrated that learned material is better recalled after a sound sleep as opposed to a disturbed...
- Slumber Quality Important For Learning
It's not just the amount of sleep we get that is so important for learning, but the quality of that sleep. That's according to a new study that made precise use of beeping noises to disrupt deep "slow-wave" sleep among 13 elderly participants...
- Intuition Enhanced By Drug
A sedative drug that interferes with memory also has the contrasting effect of enhancing intuition – the ability to use one’s ‘gut feelings’ – according to researchers at the Universities of Arizona and Colorado. Michael Frank and colleagues...
- Tip Of The Fingers Syndrome
We’ve all had that ‘tip of the tongue’ feeling when we’re sure we know the word or name for something but we just can’t think of it. Now a study has shown that a similar phenomenon occurs in American Sign Language (ASL), in what the researchers...
- Help Me Write A Good Lay Summary Of My Coordination Research
I'm writing a grant proposal, and part of the process involves a 4000 character lay summary of the project; what I'm up to, what the objectives are and who the likely beneficiaries are. The goal is for this to be in language a non-expert can understand...