Decision letter: Skill learning strengthens cortical representations of motor sequences

Abstract

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a widely used technique that makes it possible to observe changes in a person’s brain activity as they perform specific tasks while lying in a scanner. These could range from listening to music or looking at images, to recalling words or imagining a scene, and each will produce a distinct pattern of neural activity. However, fMRI data can be difficult to interpret. Say a particular area of the brain is very active when a subject is trying to perform a new task, but becomes less active as the subject becomes better at the task and performs it more easily. Does this mean that the brain region is used for learning the task, but not for performing once it has been learned? Or alternatively, does it show that the brain area is involved in carrying out the task, but that it becomes more efficient with practice, and so shows less activity in later scans? Now, Wiestler and Diedrichsen have obtained data that help to distinguish between these alternatives. Subjects were trained to carry out four specific sequences of finger movements and then asked either to reproduce these ‘trained’ sequences or to perform four ‘untrained’ sequences while in the fMRI scanner. All eight sequences produced high levels of activity in the areas of motor cortex that control finger movements. However, closer analysis showed marked differences between the patterns of activity produced during the ‘trained’ sequences and those seen during ‘untrained’ sequences that involved moving the same fingers. Wiestler and Diedrichsen proposed that when subjects train to perform specific movement sequences, this should lead to the development of neural circuits that are specialized to carry out those specific movements—and that detailed analysis of the fMRI data would allow them to identify patterns of activity that correspond to these circuits. Sure enough, when they analysed the fMRI scans, Wiestler and Diedrichsen found that the activation patterns associated with ‘trained’ movement sequences were more readily distinguishable from each other than those associated with the ‘untrained’ movement sequences, even in areas where training led to an overall reduction in activity. As well as showing that movement sequences become associated with specific spatial patterns of activation as they are learned, this study provides a new way to study learning in fMRI that should be useful for many future studies.