Study finds sleep can boost motor skill learning by 30% Journal of Neuroscience

Argentinian researchers from the University of Buenos Aires have proven that sleep helps people acquire new motor skills more quickly, whether it involves sports exercises or playing musical instruments.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience (JNeuroSci), shows that motor memories, especially those involved in adapting to new sensorimotor conditions, consolidate over time regardless of sleep. However, previous research did not account for the time between learning and sleep, which can be a critical factor, Caliber.Az reports, citing the Journal of Neuroscience (JNeuroSci).

In the new study, researchers conducted a series of experiments with 290 participants aged 20 to 28.

Volunteers were required to move a cursor on a computer screen to hit targets using a game controller. The challenge was that sometimes the cursor's movement was altered by optical rotation, requiring participants to adjust their hand movements to hit the target accurately. This task measured how well participants retained the ability to adapt to these changes—a measure of motor memory.

During the tests, participants were divided into groups: one group went to sleep immediately after completing the task, while the other practiced early in the morning and went to sleep much later.

The results showed that motor skills are most quickly forgotten within the first hour after exercises. It was also found that practicing skills before sleep improved the retention of new movements by about 30% compared to training where individuals remained awake afterwards.

Researchers found that these improvements were linked to changes in brain function during sleep, including increased frequency of brief bursts of brain activity in the hemisphere opposite to the hand used in the task. This indicates that sleep actively consolidates motor memory by fine-tuning neural networks.