Abstract
Motor skill acquisition depends on central nervous plasticity. However, behavioural determinants leading to long lasting corticospinal plasticity and motor expertise remain unexplored. Here we investigate behavioural and electrophysiological effects of individually tailored progressive practice during long-term motor skill training. Two groups of participants practiced a visuomotor task requiring precise control of the right digiti minimi for 6 weeks. One group trained with constant task difficulty, while the other group trained with progressively increasing task difficulty, i.e. continuously adjusted to their individual skill level. Compared to constant practice, progressive practice resulted in a two-fold greater performance at an advanced task level and associated increases in corticospinal excitability. Differences were maintained 8 days later, whereas both groups demonstrated equal retention 14 months later. We demonstrate that progressive practice enhances motor skill learning and promotes corticospinal plasticity. These findings underline the importance of continuously challenging patients and athletes to promote neural plasticity, skilled performance, and recovery.
Highlights
Motor skill acquisition depends on central nervous plasticity
In support of this hypothesis, we recently demonstrated that 4 days of training a visuomotor accuracy task with progressively adjusted task difficulty resulted in superior learning accompanied by transient increases in corticospinal excitability (CSE) after both the first and last practice session[4]
We hypothesize that individually tailored progressive training (PT) that continuously challenges and engages the learner will potentiate the changes in CSE accompanying nonprogressive training (NTP) and resemble those previously found in cross-sectional studies of virtuosi and elite athletes
Summary
Motor skill acquisition depends on central nervous plasticity. behavioural determinants leading to long lasting corticospinal plasticity and motor expertise remain unexplored. In contrast to this observation, studies of expert musicians and athletes have found larger cortical representation and increased CSE of their trained muscles and movements suggesting that continued training is accompanied by persistent corticospinal plastic changes[8,9,10] Such long-term plastic changes in the human corticospinal pathway accompanying motor training are not well understood, and the role of behavioural determinants in particular has only been studied s parsely[7,11,12,13]. The continuous progression in task demands and the tailoring of demands to individual levels of motor proficiency likely augments plastic changes in the corticospinal system, resulting in superior motor performance compared to conventional nonprogressive motor practice This could explain the differences in cortical representation and CSE that have been observed between novices and experts[9,31]. These results suggest that transient within-session changes in CSE are related to top-down processes involved in skill learning whilst automaticity is low
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