Neural mechanisms supporting the formation and persistence of Motor Memories.

FLORENCIA JACOBACCI, JORGE ARMONY, ABRAHAM YEFFAL, GONZALO LERNER, JORGE JOVICICH, EDSON AMARO, JULIEN DOYON, VALERIA DELLA MAGGIORE

Boston, MA

Conferencia; Brainmap Series, Martinos Center, Harvard University; 2021

Martinos Center, Massachussetts General Hospital, Harvard Universtity

Motor learning involves both the acquisition of new motor programs such as those built while learning a new skill, and the recalibration of pre-existing motor programs through sensorimotor adaptation. These two types of learning, which may be key to rehabilitation, are complementary and jointly ensure precision in motor control. This talk will focus on the mechanisms at the basis of the formation and persistence of these types of motor memories, and how they impact on human brain structure. The first part of the talk will focus on characterizing the time course of motor memory consolidation and the functional changes supporting long-term memory. Next, I will share new data from the lab suggesting that sleep further modulates motor memory consolidation during NREM3, through the coupling between sleep spindles and slow oscillations. Finally, I will show multimodal MRI data from the lab suggesting that the hippocampus is involved early during consolidation of a motor sequence, through its reactivation during the offline rest periods interspersed with practice. Together, these data provide evidence supporting the existence of common mechanisms at the basis of the formation of declarative and non-declarative memories.