Sleep Helps Us Learn Body Movement Sequences

Sleep can be a crucial factor that helps us to learn the sequence of the body’s movement, similar to learning the sequence of movements while playing a piano, says a new study. According to researchers at the University of Montreal, the regions of the brain below the cortex were important in information consolidation, especially information linked to a motor memory trace.

The lead author, Karen Debas, said that when consolidation level was measured after a period of sleep, the brain network of these areas functioned with greater synchrony, that is, they observed that communication between the various regions of this network was better optimized.

The researchers led by Dr. Julien Doyon, who taught a group of subjects a new sequence of piano-type finger movements on a box, found that the putamen, a central part of the brain, was more active in subjects who had slept, which improved performance of the task after a night of sleep and not the simple passage of daytime.

Debas said that after a night of sleep, they found that the cortico-striatal network, where one network emerged from the others, was more integrated than the others, that is, interaction among these regions was greater when consolidation had occurred.

Doyon said that their findings opened the door to other research opportunities, which could lead them to understand the mechanisms better that take place during sleep and ensure better interaction between key regions of the brain.

The study is published in the journal NeuroImage.

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Source-ANI