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Sleep has no critical role in implicit motor sequence learning in young and old adults

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Abstract

The influence of sleep on motor skill consolidation has been a research topic of increasing interest. In this study, we distinguished general skill learning from sequence-specific learning in a probabilistic implicit sequence learning task (alternating serial reaction time) in young and old adults before and after a 12-h offline interval which did or did not contain sleep (p.m.–a.m. and a.m.–p.m. groups, respectively). The results showed that general skill learning, as assessed via overall reaction time, improved offline in both the young and older groups, with the young group improving more than the old. However, the improvement was not sleep-dependent, in that there was no difference between the a.m.–p.m. and p.m.–a.m. groups. We did not find sequence-specific offline improvement in either age group for the a.m.–either p.m. or p.m.–a.m. groups, suggesting that consolidation of this kind of implicit motor sequence learning may not be influenced by sleep.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Bolyai Scholarship Program and OTKA F 61943. Thanks to Ildikó Vízi and Anna Rácz for their valuable assistance during data collection, and Gábor Csifcsák for his help.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brain and Language Lab, Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    Dezso Nemeth & Michael T. Ullman

  2. Institute of Psychology, University of Szeged, Egyetem u. 2, 6722, Szeged, Hungary

    Dezso Nemeth & Karolina Janacsek

  3. Department of Psychology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    Darlene V. Howard & James H. Howard Jr.

  4. Department of Psychology, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA

    James H. Howard Jr.

  5. Department of Applied Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Zsuzsa Londe

Authors
  1. Dezso Nemeth
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  2. Karolina Janacsek
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  3. Zsuzsa Londe
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  4. Michael T. Ullman
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  5. Darlene V. Howard
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  6. James H. Howard Jr.
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Correspondence to Dezso Nemeth.

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All authors contributed equally to this work.

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Nemeth, D., Janacsek, K., Londe, Z. et al. Sleep has no critical role in implicit motor sequence learning in young and old adults. Exp Brain Res 201, 351–358 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009-2024-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009-2024-x

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