Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website
How long does it take to form a habit?
A study involving 96 people who were interested in forming a new habit such as eating a piece of fruit with lunch or doing a 15 minute run each day has found that in the early days, daily repetition sharply increased automaticity (the ease with which you do it) and then reached a plateau. On average, habits took 66 days to become as automatic as they’d ever be. However, there was a very wide variation (18 to 254 days) depending on the nature of the habit (more difficult habits, such as doing 50 sit-ups a day, showed a slower rate of steadier increase). There was also variability among individuals, with some showing ‘habit-resistance’. The good news is that missing a single day did not reduce the chance of forming a habit. The findings also point to the value of getting off to a good start.
Lally, P., Jaarsveld, C. H. M. V., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2009). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, Published online ahead of print. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.674.
http://ow.ly/CGUt
Imagining is as good as doing
A series of experiments in which some participants practiced identifying which line a central line was closest to, while others simply imagined the bisecting line's proximity based on an audio tone, found that both methods produced similar levels of perceptual learning. It has (understandably) been assumed that perceptual learning requires stimulus processing -- synapses firing in response to an actual physical cue. But this demonstrates that mental imagery is sufficient. The finding adds to a growing number of studies suggesting that thinking about something over and over again can be almost as good as doing it.
Tartaglia, E.M., Bamert, L., Mast, F.W. & Herzog, M.H. 2009. Human Perceptual Learning by Mental Imagery. Current Biology, Published online ahead of print 3 December 2009.
http://www.physorg.com/news179067145.html
Magnetic brain stimulation improves skill learning
A study in which volunteers were trained for four days to track an apparently random target on a computer screen, in which random movement was interspersed with a repeated pattern not consciously perceived by the participants, found that those who received excitatory transcranial magnetic stimulation to the left dorsal premotor cortex were significantly better at tracking the repeating pattern than those who received inhibitory stimulation or sham stimulation. The findings support the view that the dorsal premotor cortex is important for learning motor skills, specifically through consolidation of the learned behavior.
Boyd, L.A. & Linsdell, M.A. 2009. Excitatory repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to left dorsal premotor cortex enhances motor consolidation of new skills. BMC Neuroscience, 10, 72doi:10.1186/1471-2202-10-72.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-07/bc-mbs070309.php
Motor skill learning may be enhanced by mild brain stimulation
In a study in which subjects practiced a challenging motor task over five consecutive days, those who received 20 minutes of a mild electrical current to the primary motor cortex improved significantly more that that of the control group, apparently through an effect on consolidation. Although both groups subsequently forgot the skill at about the same rate, those who had received the electrical stimulation still performed better after 3 months because they had learned the skill better. The findings hold promise for enhancing rehabilitation for people with traumatic brain injury, stroke and other conditions.
Reis, J. et al. 2009. Noninvasive cortical stimulation enhances motor skill acquisition over multiple days through an effect on consolidation. PNAS, 106, 1590-1595.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/nion-msl011609.php
Why it’s so hard to disrupt your routine
New research has added to our understanding of why we find it so hard to break a routine or overcome bad habits. The problem lies in the competition between the striatum and the hippocampus. The striatum is involved with habits and routines, for example, it records cues or landmarks that lead to a familiar destination. It’s the striatum that enables you to drive familiar routes without much conscious awareness. If you’re travelling an unfamiliar route however, you need the hippocampus, which is much ‘smarter’. The mouse study found that when the striatum was disrupted, the mice had trouble navigating using landmarks, but they were actually better at spatial learning. When the hippocampus was disrupted, the converse was true. This may help us understand, and treat, certain mental illnesses in which patients have destructive, habit-like patterns of behavior or thought. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome, and drug addiction all involve abnormal function of the striatum. Cognitive-behavioral therapy may be thought of as trying to learn to use one of these systems to overcome and, ultimately, to re-train the other.
Lee, A.S. et al. 2008. A double dissociation revealing bidirectional competition between striatum and hippocampus during learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (44), 17163-17168.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/yu-ce102008.php
Over-thinking and motor skills
Skilled athletes often maintain that thinking too much about executing a skill disrupts their performance. Now a study of 80 golfers has found that intermediate-skilled golfers asked to verbally describe a new putt after learning it took twice as many goes to sink their putts as similarly experienced golfers who weren’t asked to put their learning into words. On the other hand, golfers of lower skill benefited from such verbalization. The effect is thought to be similar to verbal overshadowing, an effect previously demonstrated for taste and appearance, where, for example, trying to describe a face interferes with subsequent recognition of that face.
Flegal, K.E. & Anderson, M.C. 2008. Overthinking skilled motor performance: Or why those who teach can't do. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 927-932.
http://www.physorg.com/news145638602.html
Passive learning imprints on the brain just like active learning
New research adds to other recent studies showing that observation can act like actual practice in acquiring new motor skills. In a study where participants played a video game in which they had to move in a particular sequence to match the position of arrows on the screen (similar to the popular Dance Revolution game), it was found that brain activity in the Action Observance Network (mostly in the inferior parietal and premotor cortices) was similar for dance sequences that were actively rehearsed daily for five days, and a different set of sequences that were passively observed for an equivalent amount of time, but declined for unfamiliar sequences.
Cross, E.S. et al. 2008. Sensitivity of the Action Observation Network to Physical and Observational Learning. Cerebral Cortex, Advance Access published on May 30, 2008. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn083
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/dc-drr071408.php
Songbirds offer clues to highly practiced motor skills in humans
A study of singing in the Bengalese finch has revealed information about motor skills that may benefit human performers and people needing motor rehabilitation. The tune of songbirds is a complex skill, achieved over a long period of practice as juveniles, and culminating in a highly stereotyped, stable song. But it turns out to be not as fixed as was thought. Adult songbirds, it seems, rely on auditory feedback to maintain their song. This study found that providing disruptive auditory feedback to a subset of the vocalizations almost immediately produced an appropriately targeted change in the bird's song. The study also found that really big changes could also be produced, but it had to be done incrementally, in small steps.
Tumer, E.C. & Brainard, M.S. 2007. Performance variability enables adaptive plasticity of 'crystallized' adult birdsong. Nature, 450, 1240-1244.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uoc--soc122107.php
Language center executive organizer of action plans
Broca's area is the region in the brain traditionally known as the ‘language center’, however recent research has broadened that understanding. The most recent study reveals that this region, and its counterpart in the right hemisphere, becomes active when people are asked to organize plans of action — an activity that we must now distinguish from a simple action sequence, which didn’t require these regions. These regions appear to implement a specialized executive system controlling the selection and nesting of action segments in a hierarchical structure of behavioral plans. This general executive function may explain Broca’s key role in language production.
Koechlin, E. & Jubault, T. 2006. Broca's Area and the Hierarchical Organization of Human Behavior. Neuron, 50, 963–974.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/cp-wtb060806.php
Planning is goal-, not action-, oriented
Studies in which monkeys were asked to perform a complex task involving several discrete steps have revealed that the brain's "executive" center, in the lateral prefrontal cortex, plans behaviors not by specifying movements required for given actions, but rather the events that will result from those actions.
Mushiake, H. et al. 2006. Activity in the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex Reflects Multiple Steps of Future Events in Action Plans. Neuron, 50, 631–641.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-05/cp-tbe051106.php
People can learn motor skills by watching
Sure we learn by doing, but we also learn by watching. Recent imaging studies have shown that when we observe the actions of others, we activate the same neural circuitry responsible for planning and executing our own actions. Now a new study has demonstrated that such observation can actually facilitate motor learning. This occurred even when observers were distracted by another task (doing arithmetic) while watching, indicating that the process does not require conscious awareness. However, although there was no sign of muscle activity during the observation, the beneficial effects of observing were significantly reduced when the subjects were asked to perform unrelated arm movements during observation.
Mattar, A.A.G. & Gribble, P.L. 2005. Motor Learning by Observing. Neuron, 46 (1), 153–160.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/cp-pcl040105.php
Brain prefers 'automatic pilot' during learning
When people are asked to perform a classification or decision on an object, they become more efficient with repetition of the task. When subject's brains are imaged during such tasks, they show reduced activity -- called "neural priming" -- as the task is learned and performance improves. New research suggests that rather than this being due to the cortex refining its knowledge about the object being learned about (eliminating attributes of the object not needed in the task), the cortex is instead just refining learning of a particular response. Thus we become more rapid with repetition of a decision task simply because we are recovering our prior responses.
In the study, participants were asked to judge whether objects such as an acorn, a stroller, a bicycle pump or a shuttlecock were "bigger than a shoebox." After practicing this task, they were then asked if the objects were "smaller than a shoebox." If the brain's representation of the size of the object is what is being rapidly recovered with repetition, just changing the direction of the question from a 'bigger than' to a 'smaller than' question should not make a difference in performance. If, however, the brain is recovering earlier responses, then changing the direction of the question will make a considerable difference to performance – which it did.
Dobbins, I.G., Schnyer, D.M., Verfaellie, M. & Schacter, D.L. 2004. Cortical activity reductions during repetition priming can result from rapid response learning. Nature, 428, 316-319 (18 Mar 2004) Letters to Nature
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-03/du-est030804.php
Reading verbs activates motor cortex areas
A new imaging study has surprised researchers by revealing that parts of the motor cortex respond when people do nothing more active than silently reading. However, the words read have to be action words. When such words are read, appropriate regions are activated – for example, reading “lick” will trigger blood flow in sites of the motor cortex associated with tongue and mouth movements. Moreover, activity also occurs in premotor brain regions that influence learning of new actions, as well as the language structures, Broca's area and Wernicke's area. The researchers suggest that these findings challenge the assumption that word meanings are processed solely in language structures – instead, our understanding of words depends on the integration of information from several interconnected brain structures that provide information about associated actions and sensations.
Hauk, O., Johnsrude, I. & Pulvermüller, F. 2004. Somatotopic Representation of Action Words in Human Motor and Premotor Cortex. Neuron, 41, 301-7.
http://www.sciencenews.org/20040207/fob2.asp
Learning a sequence with explicit knowledge of that sequence involves same
Imaging studies have found that sequence learning accompanied with awareness of the sequence activates entirely different brain regions than learning without awareness of the sequence. It has not been clear to what extent these two forms of learning (declarative vs procedural) are independent. A new imaging study devised a situation where subjects were simultaneously learning different sequences under implicit or explicit instructions, in order to establish whether, as many have thought, declarative learning prevents learning in procedural memory systems. It was found that procedural learning activated the left prefrontal cortex, left inferior parietal cortex, and right putamen. These same regions were also active during declarative learning. It appears that, in a well-controlled situation where procedural and declarative learning are occurring simultaneously, the same neural network for procedural learning is active whether that learning is or is not accompanied by declarative knowledge. Declarative learning, however, activates many additional brain regions.
Willingham, D.B., Salidis, J. & Gabrieli, J.D.E. 2003. Direct Comparison of Neural Systems Mediating Conscious and Unconscious Skill Learning. Journal of Neurophysiology, 88, 1451-1460.
Brain anticipates events to learn routines
A new study may help explain why “cognitive” practice of physical actions can be useful (e.g., sportsmen or musicians mentally “practicing” their skills). The study using macaque monkeys found that neurons in the visual cortex were more active when the monkeys anticipated the occurrence of predictable events. "These results show that as we practice and anticipate which events are going to happen, the brain is also preparing itself."
Ghose, G.M. &Maunsell, J.H.R. 2002. Attentional modulation in visual cortex depends on task timing. Nature, 419: 6907, 616-9.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-10/bcom-bae100802.php
Improving motor skills through sleep
People taught a simple motor sequence (to type a sequence of keys on a computer keyboard as quickly and accurately as possible) practised it for 12 minutes and were then re-tested 12 hours later. Those who practised in the morning and tested later that same day improved their performance by about 2%. Those trained in the evening and re-tested after a good night's sleep, however, improved by about 20%. The amount of improvement was directly correlated with the amount of Stage 2 (a stage of non-rapid eye movement or NREM) sleep experienced, particularly late in the night. "This is the part of a good night's sleep that many people will cut short by getting up early in the morning."
Laureys, S., Peigneux, P., Perrin, F. & Maquet, P. 2002. Sleep and Motor Skill Learning. Neuron, 35, 5-7.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-07/hms-pmp070102.php
New research into motor skills distinguishes between learning and performance
The cerebellum has long been associated with motor skills and coordination. A new study has shown that, although it is active when we are engaging in movement, it is not active when we are learning new motor skills. The findings suggest the cerebellum is involved in the improvement in performance gained through practice, rather than the initial learning of the motor sequence. This research may lead to a better understanding that ultimately sees the development of better rehabilitation strategies for patients with cerebellar disease. It also points to an intriguing difference between learning a motor skill and improving it.
Seidler, R.D., Purushotham, A., Kim, S.-G., Ugurbil, K., Willingham, D. & Ashe, J. 2002. Cerebellum Activation Associated with Performance Change but Not Motor Learning. Science, 296 (5575), 2043-6.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-06/vrcs-sop061302.php
The neural basis for motor learning
Learning happens when a brain cell gets stimulated in a way that reduces its ability to respond to a particular brain messenger called glutamate. In the cerebellum there are very large, strangely shaped brain cells called Purkinje cells that receive more connections than other types of neurons and fire 50 times per second even when you're sleeping. These cells are involved in simple motor learning processes. A recent study provides support for an earlier study that found there are fewer receptors for glutamate on the surface of neurons during long-term synaptic depression, by demonstrating that the other three possible causes for this reduced response to glutamate do not occur.
Linden, D.J. 2001.The expression of cerebellar LTD in culture is not associated with changes in AMPA-receptor kinetics, agonist affinity, or unitary conductance. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 98 (24), 14066-14071.
New motor skills consolidated during sleep
An imaging study that sheds light on the gain in performance observed during the day after learning a new task. Following training in a motor skill, certain brain areas appear to be reactivated during REM sleep, resulting in an optimization of the network that subtends the subject's visuo–motor response.
Laureys, S., Peigneux, P., Phillips, C., Fuchs,S., Degueldre, C., Aerts, J., Del Fiore,G., Petiau, C., Luxen, A., Van der Linden, M., Cleeremans, A., Smith, C. & Maquet, P. (2001). Experience-dependent changes in cerebral functional connectivity during human rapid eye movement sleep [Letter to Neuroscience]. Neuroscience, 105 (3), 521-525.
http://tinyurl.com/ix9b