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

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.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

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

• Publication date

  2016-09-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1101/lm.043042.116PMID 27531835PMCID 4986853
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Cerebral Activation During Initial Motor Learning Forecasts Subsequent Sleep‐Facilitated Memory Consolidation in Older Adults

  2016cited by this paper
• Sleep-dependent motor memory consolidation in older adults depends on task demands

  2015cited by this paper
• Nap it or leave it in the elderly: A nap after practice relaxes age-related limitations in procedural memory consolidation.

  2015cited by this paper
• fMRI and sleep correlates of the age‐related impairment in motor memory consolidation

  2014cited by this paper
• Aging increases the susceptibility to motor memory interference and reduces off-line gains in motor skill learning.

  2014cited by this paper
• Age-related changes in consolidation of perceptual and muscle-based learning of motor skills

  2013cited by this paper
• Sleep modulates word-pair learning but not motor sequence learning in healthy older adults.

  2012influential reference
• Fast and slow spindle involvement in the consolidation of a new motor sequence.

  2011cited by this paper
• Offline Improvement during Motor Sequence Learning Is Not Restricted to Developing Motor Chunks

  2010cited by this paper
• Age-related declines in visuospatial working memory correlate with deficits in explicit motor sequence learning.

  2009cited by this paper
• Sleep and its disorders in aging populations.

  2009cited by this paper
• Visuospatial working memory capacity predicts the organization of acquired explicit motor sequences.

  2009cited by this paper
• Sleep to learn after stroke: implicit and explicit off-line motor learning.

  2009cited by this paper
• Contribution of night and day sleep vs. simple passage of time to the consolidation of motor sequence and visuomotor adaptation learning

  2009cited by this paper
• The impact of sleep duration and subject intelligence on declarative and motor memory performance: how much is enough?

  2009influential reference
• A local signature of LTP‐ and LTD‐like plasticity in human NREM sleep

  2008cited by this paper
• Daytime Naps, Motor Memory Consolidation and Regionally Specific Sleep Spindles

  2007cited by this paper
• Changes in Sleep Architecture following Motor Learning Depend on Initial Skill Level

  2007cited by this paper
• Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Regulates the Maturation of Layer 4 Fast-Spiking Cells after the Second Postnatal Week in the Developing Barrel Cortex

  2007cited by this paper
• Learning‐dependent changes in sleep spindles and Stage 2 sleep

  2006cited by this paper
• Sleep-dependent consolidation of contextual learning.

  2006cited by this paper
• Motor Memory Consolidation in Sleep Shapes More Effective Neuronal Representations

  2005cited by this paper
• Pattern-Specific Associative Long-Term Potentiation Induced by a Sleep Spindle-Related Spike Train

  2005cited by this paper
• Implicit memory, age, and time of day: paradoxical priming effects.

  2005cited by this paper
• Regression to the mean: what it is and how to deal with it.

  2004cited by this paper
• Organization of action sequences and the role of the pre-SMA.

  2004cited by this paper
• Sleep-dependent learning and motor-skill complexity.

  2004influential reference
• Chunking during human visuomotor sequence learning

  2003cited by this paper
• Sleep forms memory for finger skills

  2002cited by this paper
• Practice with sleep makes perfect: sleep-dependent motor skill learning.

  2002cited by this paper
• Concatenating familiar movement sequences: the versatile cognitive processor.

  2001cited by this paper
• Why do we sleep?

  2000cited by this paper
• Why do we sleep?

  2000cited by this paper
• Implicit motor sequence learning is not purely perceptual

  1999cited by this paper
• Motor response programming during simple choice reaction time: The role of practice.

  1995cited by this paper
• Hierarchical control of rapid movement sequences.

  1983cited by this paper
• Quantification of sleepiness: a new approach.

  1973cited by this paper

• Sleep's contribution to memory formation.

  2025cites this paper
• A Review of the Differential Effects of Age on Online and Offline Learning of Implicit Motor Sequences

  2025cites this paper
• Sleep benefits perceptual but not movement-based learning of locomotor sequences

  2024cites this paper
• The number of effectors limits the relative sleep gain: Insights from seven finger tapping experiments

  2024cites this paper
• Chunking as a function of sequence length

  2024cites this paper
• High-intensity acute exercise impacts motor learning in healthy older adults

  2024cites this paper
• Children exhibit a developmental advantage in the offline processing of a learned motor sequence

  2024cites this paper
• Neural mechanisms associated with sleep‐dependent enhancement of motor learning after brain injury

  2024cites this paper
• The Dynamics of Chunking 6 in Humans ( Homo sapiens ) and Guinea baboons ( Papio papio ) 7 8

  2022cites this paper
• Severe publication bias contributes to illusory sleep consolidation in the motor sequence learning literature.

  2022influential citation
• The Evolution of Chunks in Sequence Learning

  2021cites this paper
• Encoding and consolidation of motor sequence learning in young and older adults.

  2021cites this paper
• Improving consolidation by applying anodal transcranial direct current stimulation at primary motor cortex during repetitive practice.

  2020cites this paper
• Sleep-dependent motor memory consolidation in healthy adults: A meta-analysis.

  2020cites this paper
• Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation of Supplementary Motor Region Impacts the Effectiveness of Interleaved and Repetitive Practice Schedules for Retention of Motor Skills

  2020cites this paper
• Sleeping time is associated with functional limitations in a national sample of older Americans

  2020cites this paper
• Bexarotene treatment increases dendritic length in the nucleus accumbens without change in the locomotor activity and memory behaviors, in old mice.

  2019cites this paper
• The protective effects of acute cardiovascular exercise on the interference of procedural memory

  2018cites this paper
• Sleep, and its Relation to Non-Motor Deficits in Patients with Cerebellar Ataxia

  2018cites this paper
• Sleeping on the motor engram: The multifaceted nature of sleep‐related motor memory consolidation

  2017cites this paper
• Age‐related differences in sleep‐based memory consolidation: A meta‐analysis

  2017cites this paper
• Differences in chunking behavior between young and older adults diminish with extended practice

  2017cites this paper
• ACUTE EXERCISE CAN PROTECT A NEWLY ACQUIRED PROCEDURAL SKILL

  2017cites this paper