Persistence of hippocampal and striatal multivoxel patterns during awake rest after motor sequence learning

Bradley R King; Mareike A Gann; Dante Mantini; Julien Doyon; Geneviève Albouy

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.105498

Persistence of hippocampal and striatal multivoxel patterns during awake rest after motor sequence learning

iScience. 2022 Nov 4;25(12):105498. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.105498. eCollection 2022 Dec 22.

Authors

Bradley R King¹, Mareike A Gann², Dante Mantini², Julien Doyon³, Geneviève Albouy^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Health and Kinesiology, College of Health, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA.
² Department of Movement Sciences, Movement Control and Neuroplasticity Research Group, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
³ McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2T5, Canada.

Abstract

Memory consolidation, the process by which newly encoded and fragile memories become more robust, is thought to be supported by the reactivation of brain regions - including the hippocampus - during post-learning rest. While hippocampal reactivations have been demonstrated in humans in the declarative memory domain, it remains unknown whether such a process takes place after motor learning. Using multivariate analyses of task-related and resting state fMRI data, here we show that patterns of brain activity within both the hippocampus and striatum elicited during motor learning persist into post-learning rest, indicative of the reactivation of learning-related neural activity patterns. Moreover, results indicate that hippocampal reactivation reflects the spatial representation of the learned motor sequence. These results thus provide insights into the functional significance of neural reactivation after motor sequence learning.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Cognitive neuroscience; Neuroscience.