• Michael Vesia, Roberta Pellicciari, Robin F H Cash, Reina Isayama, Nirsan Kunaratnam, Gaayathiri Jegatheeswaran, and Robert Chen.
• School of Kinesiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Electronic address: mvesia@umich.edu.
• Neuroscience. 2019 Apr 15; 404: 387-395.

AbstractAction observation can facilitate motor skill learning and lead to a memory trace in motor representations of action. However, it remains unclear whether the action itself or the goal of the action drive changes in motor representations after learning by observation. We performed two experiments. In Experiment 1, using serial reaction time task and transcranial magnetic stimulation, we showed that observation of right-hand actions during skill learning only increased left motor cortical excitability, leading to behavioral gains in the same hand as the observed hand. In contrast, observing a sequence of visual cue positions devoid of hand action increases motor cortical excitability in both hemispheres and facilitates motor skill learning in the right hand (Experiment 1) and left hand for a mirror-symmetric sequence (Experiment 2). We propose that the encoding of observed movements maps onto motor representations of the same action to form a limb-specific motor memory, whereas the learning of spatial goals forms memory traces in the motor representations in both hemispheres to prepare for potential action in either hand.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

28 keywords...

hide…