Abstract
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies investigating the acquisition of sequential motor skills in humans have revealed learning-related functional reorganizations of the cortico-striatal and cortico-cerebellar motor systems accompanied with an initial hippocampal contribution. Yet, the functional significance of these activity-level changes remains ambiguous as they convey the evolution of both sequence-specific knowledge and unspecific task ability. Moreover, these changes do not specifically assess the occurrence of learning-related plasticity. To address these issues, we investigated local circuits tuning to sequence-specific information using multivariate distances between patterns evoked by consolidated or newly acquired motor sequences production. The results reveal that representations in dorsolateral striatum, prefrontal and secondary motor cortices are greater when executing consolidated sequences than untrained ones. By contrast, sequence representations in the hippocampus and dorsomedial striatum becomes less engaged. Our findings show, for the first time in humans, that complementary sequence-specific motor representations evolve distinctively during critical phases of skill acquisition and consolidation.
Highlights
Animals and humans are able to acquire and automatize new sequences of movements, allowing them to expand and update their repertoire of complex goal-oriented motor actions for longterm use
As a part of a larger research program interested in identifying the neural substrates implicated in both consolidation and reconsolidation processes, the present study aimed to address both the critical issues overlooked by previous research investigating the early phases of motor sequence learning (MSL) consolidation with GLM-based approach described above, as well as the limitations encountered when using classifier-based multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) methods
Using an MVPA approach, we considered that stable local patterns of activity could be used as a proxy for the specialization of neuronal circuits supportive of the efficient retrieval and expression of sequential motor memory traces
Summary
Animals and humans are able to acquire and automatize new sequences of movements, allowing them to expand and update their repertoire of complex goal-oriented motor actions for longterm use. To investigate the mechanisms underlying this type of procedural memory in humans, a large body of behavioral studies has used motor sequence learning (MSL) tasks designed to test the ability to perform temporally ordered and coordinated movements, learned either implicitly or explicitly and has assessed their performances in different phases of the acquisition process (Korman et al, 2003; Abrahamse et al, 2013; Diedrichsen and Kornysheva, 2015; Verwey et al, 2015). It is thought that sleep favors reprocessing of the motor memory trace, promoting its consolidation for long-term skill proficiency (Fischer et al, 2002, see King et al, 2017; Doyon et al, 2018 for recent in-depth reviews)
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