Short timescale modulation of cortical and cerebellar activity in the early phase of motor sequence learning: an fMRI st
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Short timescale modulation of cortical and cerebellar activity in the early phase of motor sequence learning: an fMRI study Stefano Magon 1,2 & Armanda Pfister 1 & Gaetano Laura 1,2 & Martin Lüthi 1 & Athina Papadopoulou 1 & Ludwig Kappos 1 & Till Sprenger 3
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Motor learning is a multi-stage process, in which the involvement of different brain regions is related to the specific stage. We aimed at characterising short timescale changes of brain activity induced by motor sequence learning. Twenty healthy volunteers performed a serial reaction time task during an MRI session in a 3 T scanner. The task consisted of two conditions: repeated and random, that were compared over the whole fMRI run, as well as within sections, to investigate brain activity modulating related to the learning stage. The whole fMRI run analysis showed a stronger response for the repeated condition in fronto-parietal regions, cerebellum and thalamus. The analysis on sections showed initially increased right cerebellar activity. In the subsequent phase, bilateral cerebellar activity was observed, while no increased activity was seen in the last phase, when the learning was established. At the neocortical level, the repeated condition showed stronger activity at first in fronto-parietal regions bilaterally, then lateralized to the right hemisphere in the last learning phase. This study showed short time scale brain activity modulation in cortical and cerebellar regions with involvement of different brain regions over the learning process not restricted to the motor circuit. Keywords Motor learning . Cerebellum . Short timescale . fMRI
Introduction Motor learning refers to a process by which movements are executed more quickly and accurately with practice. Activities like writing a letter, playing tennis or playing a piece of music on the piano require the execution of specific sequences of movements. Therefore, motor sequence learning (MSL) skills, i.e. the ability to learn a sequence of movements in a specific order, play a fundamental role in our everyday life.
Stefano Magon and Armanda Pfister contributed equally to this work. * Stefano Magon [email protected] 1
Department of Neurology, University Hospital Basel, Petersgraben 4, 4031 Basel, Switzerland
2
Medical Image Analysis Center, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland
3
Department of Neurology, DKD Helios Klinik Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany
There is evidence that MSL is a multiple-stage process that includes an early learning stage, in which significant improvements can be observed after few or even one training session, and a subsequent slow learning stage in which further improvements in task performance are reached after multiple sessions of practice (Dayan and Cohen 12). The relative duration of what can be defined as fast and slow learning phase is highly task specific, i.e. the fast stage of learning of a simple key-pressing sequence could last few minutes, whereas whe
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