Selective improvements in balancing associated with offline periods of spaced training

Antonino Casabona,Matteo Cioni,Gabriele Castorina,Maria Stella Valle,Carlo Cavallaro

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-26228-4

Abstract

Benefits from post-training memory processing have been observed in learning many procedural skills. Here, we show that appropriate offline periods produce a performance gain during learning to stand on a multiaxial balance board. The tilt angle and the area of sway motion of the board were much more reduced in participants performing a training spaced by an interval of one day with respect to participants executing the same amount of practice over a concentrated period. In particular, offline memory encoding was specifically associated with the motion along the anterior-posterior direction, the spatio-temporal dynamics, and the frequency contents of the board sway. Overall, quantification of spaced learning in a whole-body postural task reveals that offline memory processes enhance the performance by encoding single movement components. From a practical perspective, we believe that the amount of practice and the length of inter-session interval, adopted in this study, may provide objective insights to develop appropriate programs of postural training.

Highlights

Learning experience based on trial-by-trial movement repetition is marked by an early stage with a fast performance improvement, followed by a more gradual gain as the practice continues
The use of tasks with an important impact on the real life would allow to estimate the utility of spaced training in fields such as rehabilitation, sport sciences and occupational physiology. With this perspective in mind, we studied the effects of spaced training on learning upright standing on a multiaxial balance board
The AP and medial-lateral (ML) directional components exhibit functional differences during quiet stance, with more unstable movements along the AP than ML direction[27,28,29]. Starting from these data, two main working hypotheses were tested: first, we asked whether the amount of online practice adopted in the previous study could produce further improvements of the postural performance when the sessions were separated by an interval of one day; second, to take advantage from the multiple sensory and motor elements required to accomplish a challenging balance task, we explored the hypothesis that some components of postural control could be influenced by the between-session pause rather than the online practice

Summary

Introduction

Learning experience based on trial-by-trial movement repetition is marked by an early stage with a fast performance improvement, followed by a more gradual gain as the practice continues. The length of time after training[3,7,8], the amount of practice[9,10], sleep intervals[10,11,12], conditions of task execution[8,13,14], and interferences from other tasks[15], are the most common elements activating and/or modulating the effects of spaced training on learning motor skills. These effects have been studied mostly in movement paradigms, such as finger sequence tapping[2,16,17,18], visuomotor skills[19,20], reaching in force fields[4,21], while more commons everyday gross motor skills, such as walking or upright standing, have remained poorly explored[22,23,24]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion