Cognitive Neuroscience Society 2011 (San Francisco, CA)
Enhancing motor memory for a melodic sequence by re-playing the melody during sleep
James W. Antony, Eric W. Gobel, Justin K. O’Hare, Paul J. Reber & Ken A. Paller
Northwestern University
A steadily increasing body of evidence supports a role for sleep in memory reactivation and consolidation. Memory traces are thought to be spontaneously reactivated during sleep, enhancing storage and improving subsequent memory performance. This natural process can apparently be triggered by auditory or olfactory stimuli during sleep, if those stimuli had previously been linked with learning (Rasch et al., 2007; Rudoy et al., 2009; Smith & Weeden, 1990). We now report that motor memories for a 12-item musical sequence, played using four fingers on four keys in time with moving visual cues (as in the video game, “Guitar Hero”), can be improved by presenting the corresponding tone sequences during sleep. Sixteen participants learned two repeating melodies composed with either four high tones or four low tones. Training involved 40 repetitions of each sequence in interleaved blocks. Performance was tested before and after a 90-minute afternoon nap. Responses were scored as correct only if made with the correct key and within the target time window. Performance on the learned sequences was superior to performance on novel sequences. Crucially, one musical sequence was played softly through a speaker 20 times during a 4-minute segment of slow-wave sleep, without the participants’ knowledge. After the nap, but not before, performance was significantly better on the cued sequence than on the non-cued sequence. These results demonstrate that motor memories can be selectively enhanced during sleep, most likely because reinstating the tone sequence reactivated corresponding representations of the visual cues and/or the learned motor sequence.
Posted by Paul