You will be provided with a reference and some statements. Please determine whether each statement is 'supported', 'unsupported', or 'unknown' with respect to the reference. Please note:
First, assess whether the reference contains any valid content. If the reference contains no valid information, such as a 'page not found' message, then all statements should be considered 'unknown'.
If the reference is valid, for a given statement: if the facts or data it contains can be found entirely or partially within the reference, it is considered 'supported' (data accepts rounding); if all facts and data in the statement cannot be found in the reference, it is considered 'unsupported'.

You should return the result in a JSON list format, where each item in the list contains the statement's index and the judgment result, for example:
[
    {
        "idx": 1,
        "result": "supported"
    },
    {
        "idx": 2,
        "result": "unsupported"
    }
]

Below are the reference and statements:
<reference>
Motor Learning Unfolds over Different Timescales in Distinct Neural Systems - PMC

A new study reveals the time-resolved brain map of activity involved in the formation of motor memories, from seconds to hours and from the frontal and parietal lobes to the cerebellum. Read the Research Article.

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov

A

.gov
website belongs to an official
government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A
lock
(

) or
https://
means you've safely
connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive
information only on official, secure websites.

Search

Log in

Dashboard

Publications

Account settings

Log out

Search…

Search NCBI

Primary site navigation

Search

Logged in as:

Dashboard

Publications

Account settings

Log in

Search PMC Full-Text Archive

Search in PMC

Journal List

User Guide

PERMALINK

Copy

As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with,
the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more:

PMC Disclaimer

|

PMC Copyright Notice

PLoS Biol
. 2015 Dec 8;13(12):e1002313. doi:
10.1371/journal.pbio.1002313

Search in PMC

Search in PubMed

View in NLM Catalog

Add to search

Motor Learning Unfolds over Different Timescales in Distinct Neural Systems

Janelle Weaver

Janelle Weaver

1
Freelance Science Writer, Carbondale, Colorado, United States of America

Find articles by
Janelle Weaver

1,
*

Author information

Article notes

Copyright and License information

1
Freelance Science Writer, Carbondale, Colorado, United States of America

The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

✉
* E-mail:
weaver.janelle@gmail.com

Collection date 2015 Dec.

© 2015 Janelle Weaver

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.

PMC Copyright notice

PMCID: PMC4672876 PMID:
26646076

See "
Neural Substrates Related to Motor Memory with Multiple Timescales in Sensorimotor Adaptation
", e1002312.

Abstract

A new study reveals the time-resolved brain map of activity involved in the formation of motor memories, from seconds to hours and from the frontal and parietal lobes to the cerebellum. Read the Research Article.

Anyone who has learned how to play a musical instrument knows that translating notes on a sheet into finger movements is effortful at first, but gradually becomes more automatic over time. This widely appreciated feature of motor learning was described in 1967 by Paul Fitts and Michael Posner. In a book entitled
Human Performance
, the well-known psychologists proposed three stages of learning motor skills: a cognitive phase, an associative phase, and an autonomous phase.

In the first stage, movements are slow, inconsistent, and inefficient, and large parts of the movement are controlled consciously. In the second stage, movements become more fluid, reliable, and efficient, and some parts of the movement are controlled automatically. And in the third stage, movements are accurate, consistent, and efficient, and movement is largely controlled automatically. However, it has not been clear exactly how the different stages of motor learning map onto neural systems in the brain.

In a study published in this issue of
PLOS Biology
, Nicolas Schweighofer of the University of Southern California and Hiroshi Imamizu of the University of Tokyo combined computational modeling with behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to create a brain-wide map of motor memories with different timescales (
Fig 1
). According to the authors, the findings shed new light on a classical psychological theory and could potentially be used to improve strategies for the rehabilitation of motor skills after brain damage.

Fig 1. Different timescales for motor learning.

Open in a new tab

Learning takes place in different brain regions at different timescales. The four panels in the figure represent time constants that characterize the speed of changes.
Image credit
:
Hiroshi Imamizu
.
In the new study, 21 healthy volunteers performed visual-motor adaptation tasks while their brain activity was measured with fMRI. At the beginning of each trial, a white cross (cursor) appeared at the center of the screen, and subjects then manipulated a joystick to move the cursor to a red or blue circle that appeared at the top of the screen. But there was a visual-motor mismatch: The cursor was rotated by 40 degrees relative to the actual movement direction. Over time, the subjects learned to adapt to this rotation by adjusting the joystick movement in the opposite direction.

The behavioral data revealed multiple stages of motor learning, with fast adaptation occurring within blocks of nine trials and slow adaptation occurring across the blocks. The researchers then developed a model to determine which neural systems were involved in the different stages of motor learning. They found that fast learning taking place within five seconds was associated with activity in frontal and parietal brain regions. By contrast, intermediate learning between two minutes and about one and a half hours was associated with activity in the anterior region of the inferior parietal lobe. The slowest learning stage, which unfolded over hours, was associated with activity in the anterior to medial portions of the cerebellum—a brain region that plays an important role in motor control.

These findings are consistent with past research showing that frontal regions are involved in early learning stages of attention, arousal, visual motion analysis, spatial working memory, memory of hand movements, and movement planning. Similarly, parietal regions are known to play a role in early learning stages of mental and visual-motor rotation. Taken together, the findings suggest that the initial cognitive and associative phases of motor learning recruit frontal and parietal brain regions, whereas the late stage of autonomous learning depends on the anterior-medial cerebellum. Thus, by combining multiple complementary techniques, the researchers provided deeper insights into a classical and influential psychological theory proposed several decades ago.

Reference

1.

Kim Sungshin, Ogawa Kenji, Lv Jinchi, Schweighofer Nicolas, Imamizu Hiroshi. Neural substrates related to motor memory with multiple timescales in sensorimotor adaptation. PLoS Biol. 2015;13(12): e1002312.
[
DOI
] [
PMC free article
] [
PubMed
] [
Google Scholar
]

Articles from PLoS Biology are provided here courtesy of
PLOS

ACTIONS

View on publisher site

PDF (568.3 KB)

Cite

Collections

Permalink

PERMALINK

Copy

RESOURCES

Similar articles

Cited by other articles

Links to NCBI Databases

Cite

Copy

Download .nbib

.nbib

Format:

AMA

APA

MLA

NLM

Add to Collections

Create a new collection

Add to an existing collection

Name your collection

*

Choose a collection

Unable to load your collection due to an error

Please try again

Add

Cancel

Follow NCBI

NCBI on X (formerly known as Twitter)

NCBI on Facebook

NCBI on LinkedIn

NCBI on GitHub

NCBI RSS feed

Connect with NLM

NLM on X (formerly known as Twitter)

NLM on Facebook

NLM on YouTube

National Library of Medicine

8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20894

Web Policies

FOIA

HHS Vulnerability Disclosure

Help

Accessibility

Careers

NLM

NIH

HHS

USA.gov

Back to Top
</reference>

<statements>
1. Fitts & Posner's cognitive→associative→autonomous stages and Bernstein's freeze→release→exploit degrees-of-freedom progression prescribe what feedback to give when: concise cues and DoF-freezing for novices; variability, timing, and efficiency refinement for advanced learners.
2. Fitts & Posner (1967): cognitive (slow, attention-heavy) → associative (fluid, error-detecting) → autonomous (automatic).
</statements>

Begin the assessment now. Output only the JSON list, without any conversational text or explanations.