Motor learning
Everyday activities - like making coffee or dressing up in the morning - require the performance of movement sequences. In experiments, motor sequence learning is often assessed with the serial reaction time (SRT) task (Doppler et al., 2019).
The SRT task can also be used to investigate how stroke patients could re-learn movement sequences during rehabilitation.
The general ability to acquire motor sequence knowledge seems to be preserved in left hemisphere (LH) stroke patients, but only if the (temporal – when does the next stimulus occur and spatial – where does it occur) context was similar during learning and retrieval (Dovern et al., 2016).
Notably, patients with LH stroke could learn motor sequences even when the temporal information during learning was unpredictable (random; Dovern, Niessen et al., 2017).
However, apraxia, a motor cognitive deficit after stroke, impaired the intentional retrieval of incidentally acquired motor knowledge (Dovern et al., 2011).
Selected publications
- Doppler CEJ, Meyer L, Dovern A, Stühmer-Beckh J, Weiss PH, Fink GR (2019). Differential impact of social and monetary reward on procedural learning and consolidation in aging and its structural correlates. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 11, 188. DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2019.00188
- Dovern A, Fink GR, Saliger J, Karbe H, Koch I, Weiss PH (2011). Apraxia impairs intentional retrieval of incidentally acquired motor knowledge. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(22), 8102– 8108. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6585-10.2011
- Dovern A, Fink GR, Timpert DC, Saliger J, Karbe H, Weiss PH, Koch I (2016). Timing matters? Learning of complex spatio-temporal sequences in left-hemisphere stroke patients. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 28(2), 223-236. DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_00890
- Dovern A, Niessen E, Ant JM, Saliger J, Karbe H, Fink GR, Koch I, Weiss PH (2017). Timing independent spatial motor sequence learning is preserved in left hemisphere stroke. Neuropsychologia, 106, 322-327. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.09.030