Insufficient chunk concatenation may underlie changes in sleep-dependent consolidation of motor sequence learning in older adults.

abstract

• Sleep enhances motor sequence learning (MSL) in young adults by concatenating subsequences ("chunks") formed during skill acquisition. To examine whether this process is reduced in aging, we assessed performance changes on the MSL task following overnight sleep or daytime wake in healthy young and older adults. Young adult performance enhancement was correlated with nREM2 sleep, and facilitated by preferential improvement of slowest within-sequence transitions. This effect was markedly reduced in older adults, and accompanied by diminished sigma power density (12-15 Hz) during nREM2 sleep, suggesting that diminished chunk concatenation following sleep may underlie reduced consolidation of MSL in older adults.

authors

• Wright, David

published proceedings

• Learn Mem

altmetric score

• 7

author list (cited authors)

• Bottary, R., Sonni, A., Wright, D., & Spencer, R.

citation count

• 13

complete list of authors

• Bottary, Ryan||Sonni, Akshata||Wright, David||Spencer, Rebecca MC

publication date

• September 2016

publisher

• Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory  Publisher

published in

• Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)  Journal

keywords

• Adolescent
• Adult
• Aged
• Aging
• Female
• Humans
• Learning
• Male
• Memory Consolidation
• Middle Aged
• Motor Skills
• Psychomotor Performance
• Sleep
• Sleep Stages
• Young Adult

PubMed Central ID

• 27531835

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1101/lm.043042.116

start page

• 455

end page

• 459

volume

• 23

issue

• 9

URL

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/lm.043042.116