The role of sleep and practice in implicit and explicit motor learning

Abstract

Sleep is hypothesized to play a functional role in the consolidation of memory, with more robust findings for implicit, than explicit memory. Previous studies have observed improvements on an explicit motor task after a sleep period. We examined the role of massed practice and sleep on implicit and explicit learning within a motor task. Controlling for non-sleep factors (e.g. massed practice, circadian confounds) eliminated both explicit and implicit learning effects that have been attributed to sleep.

Figure 1

The experimental paradigm with examples of the movement patterns used in the experiment. The “tracers” or “tails” in the figure are for illustrative purposes only; during the experiment the screen was blank, with the exception of a single dot target and the cursor.

Figure 2

Distance to the target over blocks for practice and sleep conditions. A smaller distance indicates better performance. The vertical line indicates the between session break. Error bars are +/−1 standard error of the means across participants. Curves are the average of individual fits to each participant’s data from blocks 2 to 20 of session one.

Figure 3

Distance to the target averaged over blocks 19 and 20 of session one and 22 and 23 of session two for each condition. Error bars are +/−1 standard error of the means across participants.