How sleep helps brain learn motor task

An MRI shows the location (in yellow) of the Supplementary Motor Area, an area of the brain found to be involved in consolidating learning of sequential finger tapping motor tasks. Credit: Yuka Sasaki/Brown University


"The mechanisms of memory consolidations regarding learning were still uncertain until now," said Masako Tamaki, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University and lead author of the study that appears Aug. 21 in the Journal of Neuroscience. "We were trying to figure out which part of the brain is doing what during sleep, independent of what goes on during . We were trying to figure out the specific role of sleep."


Specifically, the results of complex experiments performed at Massachusetts General Hospital and then analyzed at Brown, show that the improved speed and accuracy volunteers showed on the task after a few hours sleep was significantly associated with changes in fast-sigma and delta brainwave in their (SMA), a region on the top-middle of the brain. These specific brainwave changes in the SMA occurred during a particular phase of sleep known as "slow-wave" sleep.




Meticulous measurements

Possible roles for fast-sigma and delta and for the SMA had suggestive support at in the literature before this study, but no one had obtained much proof in part because doing so requires a complex experimental protocol.

To make their findings Sasaki, Tamaki and their team asked each of their 15 subjects to volunteer for the motor learning experiments. For the first three nights nine subjects simply slept at whatever ther preferred bedtime was while their brains were scanned both with magnetoencephalography (MEG), which measures the oscillations with precise timing, and polysomnography, which keeps track of sleep phase. By this time the researchers had good baseline measurements of their and subjects had become accustomed to sleeping in the lab.

On day 4 the subjects learned the finger-tapping task on their non-dominant hand (to purposely make it harder to learn). The subjects were then allowed to go to sleep for three hours and were again scanned with PSG and MEG. Then the researchers woke them up. An hour later they asked the subjects to perform the tapping task. As a control, six other subjects remained did not sleep after learning the task, but were also asked to perform it four hours after being trained. Those who slept did the task faster and more accurately that those who did not.


In all, the experimenters tracked 5 different oscillation frequencies in eight brain regions (four distinct regions on each of the brain's two sides). Sasaki said she expected the most significant activity to take place in the "M1" brain region which governs motor control, but instead the significant changes occurred in the SMA on the opposite side of the trained hand.

What was especially important about the delta and fast-sigma oscillations was that they fit two key criteria with statistical significance: they changed substantially after substantially after subjects were trained in the task and the strength of that change correlated with the degree of the subject's performance improvement on the task.

After performing the experiments the team of Sasaki, Tamaki and co-author Takeo Watanabe moved from MGH to Brown where they have set up a new sleep lab. They have since begun a project to further study how the brain consolidates learning. In this case they're looking at visual learning tasks.


To find out, some volunteers will just have to on it.

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1 / 5 (2) Aug 20, 2013
THE human brain is such a marvelous creation. I've seen the active CAT scan of a human brain and all those different metabolic and electrical functions that the researches demonstrated to me. Yet, none of them could tell me where the human mind resides! They showed me ASTOUNDING case studies of animals and people who had lost parts of their brains and still lived and functioned. They showed the rates of degradation of human sentience as more and more of the brain is lost due to damage or disease. I even saw a cross sectional scan and micrograph of the potent brain blood barrier - IT, is not what it sounds like! The mind, and what gives thought LIFE, and how do we 'make' new ideas even in our sleep. The brain is like an enormous onion with all its functions and layers of function. I even asked, " Does the brain make its own stem cells?" I forgot the answer, so I guess my brain has made too many new ones for the old ones to tell them what the dead ones would say, haha!
3 / 5 (1) Aug 21, 2013
Wow!"Sleep is not just a waste of time," Sasaki said.
How amazing words it is!!
With the fast-sigma and delta brainwave oscillations,we got lots of benefit for our brain.
But,how the the delta oscillations govern brain's SMA,and connect our brain's cortex??
If we could contral the details,humanity would improve more and more quickly!