scholarly journals Delayed Benefits from Spaced Training When Learning a Precision Throwing Task

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 2359
Author(s):  
Antonino Casabona ◽  
Luciano Lombardo ◽  
Matteo Cioni ◽  
Maria Stella Valle

Spaced training produces gains in performance associated with memory consolidation, which develops between sessions (offline gain). Learning motor skills that require many repetitions may generate a delay in memory formation and in offline gain. We tested the presence of this delay by studying a precision throwing task. Sixteen participants performed 1020 underarm precision throws distributed over four sessions. Eight participants spaced the training by 40-min between-session intervals, while the remaining subjects distributed the practice with 1-day intervals. Memory retention was tested 15 days after training. Differences in accuracy over groups, sessions, directions of throwing movements and blocks of throws were evaluated by analysis of variance. The 40-min group had better performance than the 1-day group after the first two sessions. As the level of skill stabilized, the 1-day group exhibited offline gains, with significant performance improvements during the fourth and retention session. Both medial-lateral and antero-posterior movement directions of throwing contributed to the performance. Initial decrements in performance appeared within sessions for both groups. Overall, when learning a precision throwing task, benefits from spaced training is delayed and occurs as the skill stabilizes. These findings may help to optimize training distribution schedules, particularly for precision motor skills requiring extensive practice.

SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fereshteh Dehnavi ◽  
Ping Chai Koo-Poeggel ◽  
Maryam Ghorbani ◽  
Lisa Marshall

Abstract Study Objectives Synchronization of neural activity within local networks and between brain regions is a major contributor to rhythmic field potentials such as the EEG. On the other hand, dynamic changes in microstructure and activity are reflected in the EEG, for instance slow oscillation (SO) slope can reflect synaptic strength. SO-spindle coupling is a measure for neural communication. It was previously associated with memory consolidation, but also shown to reveal strong inter-individual differences. In studies, weak electric current stimulation has modulated brain rhythms and memory retention. Here we investigate whether SO-spindle coupling and SO slope during baseline sleep are associated with (predictive of) stimulation efficacy on retention performance. Methods Twenty-five healthy subjects participated in three experimental sessions. Sleep-associated memory consolidation was measured in two sessions, in one anodal transcranial direct current stimulation oscillating at subjects individual SO frequency (so-tDCS) was applied during nocturnal sleep. The third session was without a learning task (baseline sleep). The dependence on SO-spindle coupling and SO-slope during baseline sleep of so-tDCS efficacy on retention performance were investigated. Results Stimulation efficacy on overnight retention of declarative memories was associated with nesting of slow spindles to SO trough in deep non-rapid eye movement baseline sleep. Steepness and direction of SO slope in baseline sleep were features indicative for stimulation efficacy. Conclusions Findings underscore a functional relevance of activity during the SO up-to-down state transition for memory consolidation and provide support for distinct consolidation mechanisms for types of declarative memories.


MicroRNA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 09 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadniman Rahman ◽  
Chaity Modak ◽  
Mousumi Akter ◽  
Mohammad Shamimul Alam

Background: Learning and memory is basic aspects in neurogenetics as most of the neurological disorders start with dementia or memory loss. Several genes associated with memory formation have been discovered. MicroRNA genes miR-1000 and miR-375 were reported to be associated with neural integration and glucose homeostasis in some insects and vertebrates. However, neuronal function of these genes is yet to be established in D. melanogaster. Objective: Possible role of miR-1000 and miR-375 in learning and memory formation in this fly has been explored in the present study. Methods: Both appetitive and aversive olfactory conditional learning were tested in the miR-1000 and miR-375 knockout (KO) strains and compared with wild one. Five days old third instar larvae were trained by allowing them to be associated with an odor with reward (fructose) or punishment (salt). Then, the larvae were tested to calculate their preferences to the odor trained with. Learning index (LI) values and larval locomotion speed were calculated for all strains. Results: No significant difference was observed for larval locomotion speed in mutant strains. Knockout strain of miR-1000 showed significant deficiency in both appetitive and aversive memory formation whereas miR-375 KO strain showed a significantly lower response only in appetitive one. Conclusion: The results of the present study indicate important role played by these two genes in forming short-term memory in D. melanogaster.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 1639
Author(s):  
Seungmin Jung ◽  
Jihoon Moon ◽  
Sungwoo Park ◽  
Eenjun Hwang

Recently, multistep-ahead prediction has attracted much attention in electric load forecasting because it can deal with sudden changes in power consumption caused by various events such as fire and heat wave for a day from the present time. On the other hand, recurrent neural networks (RNNs), including long short-term memory and gated recurrent unit (GRU) networks, can reflect the previous point well to predict the current point. Due to this property, they have been widely used for multistep-ahead prediction. The GRU model is simple and easy to implement; however, its prediction performance is limited because it considers all input variables equally. In this paper, we propose a short-term load forecasting model using an attention based GRU to focus more on the crucial variables and demonstrate that this can achieve significant performance improvements, especially when the input sequence of RNN is long. Through extensive experiments, we show that the proposed model outperforms other recent multistep-ahead prediction models in the building-level power consumption forecasting.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 261
Author(s):  
Frank J. van Schalkwijk ◽  
Walter R. Gruber ◽  
Laurie A. Miller ◽  
Eugen Trinka ◽  
Yvonne Höller

Memory complaints are frequently reported by patients with epilepsy and are associated with seizure occurrence. Yet, the direct effects of seizures on memory retention are difficult to assess given their unpredictability. Furthermore, previous investigations have predominantly assessed declarative memory. This study evaluated within-subject effects of seizure occurrence on retention and consolidation of a procedural motor sequence learning task in patients with epilepsy undergoing continuous monitoring for five consecutive days. Of the total sample of patients considered for analyses (N = 53, Mage = 32.92 ± 13.80 y, range = 18–66 y; 43% male), 15 patients experienced seizures and were used for within-patient analyses. Within-patient contrasts showed general improvements over seizure-free (day + night) and seizure-affected retention periods. Yet, exploratory within-subject contrasts for patients diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy (n = 10) showed that only seizure-free retention periods resulted in significant improvements, as no performance changes were observed following seizure-affected retention. These results indicate general performance improvements and offline consolidation of procedural memory during the day and night. Furthermore, these results suggest the relevance of healthy temporal lobe functioning for successful consolidation of procedural information, as well as the importance of seizure control for effective retention and consolidation of procedural memory.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (20) ◽  
pp. 5748
Author(s):  
Zhibo Zhang ◽  
Qing Chang ◽  
Na Zhao ◽  
Chen Li ◽  
Tianrun Li

The future development of communication systems will create a great demand for the internet of things (IOT), where the overall control of all IOT nodes will become an important problem. Considering the essential issues of miniaturization and energy conservation, in this study, a new data downlink system is designed in which all IOT nodes harvest energy first and then receive data. To avoid the unsolvable problem of pre-locating all positions of vast IOT nodes, a device called the power and data beacon (PDB) is proposed. This acts as a relay station for energy and data. In addition, we model future scenes in which a communication system is assisted by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), large intelligent surfaces (LISs), and PDBs. In this paper, we propose and solve the problem of determining the optimal flight trajectory to reach the minimum energy consumption or minimum time consumption. Four future feasible scenes are analyzed and then the optimization problems are solved based on numerical algorithms. Simulation results show that there are significant performance improvements in energy/time with the deployment of LISs and reasonable UAV trajectory planning.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (6) ◽  
pp. 1272-1276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koichi Momma ◽  
Fujio Izumi

VESTAis a three-dimensional visualization system for crystallographic studies and electronic state calculations. It has been upgraded to the latest version,VESTA 3, implementing new features including drawing the external morphology of crystals; superimposing multiple structural models, volumetric data and crystal faces; calculation of electron and nuclear densities from structure parameters; calculation of Patterson functions from structure parameters or volumetric data; integration of electron and nuclear densities by Voronoi tessellation; visualization of isosurfaces with multiple levels; determination of the best plane for selected atoms; an extended bond-search algorithm to enable more sophisticated searches in complex molecules and cage-like structures; undo and redo in graphical user interface operations; and significant performance improvements in rendering isosurfaces and calculating slices.


2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (04) ◽  
pp. 301-305
Author(s):  
E. Prof. Uhlmann ◽  
F. Kaulfersch

Partikelverstärkte Titanmatrix-Verbundwerkstoffe erlauben erhebliche Leistungssteigerungen im Bereich hochtemperaturbeanspruchter Struktur- und Funktionsbauteile. Die durch die Partikelverstärkung gesteigerte Verschleißbeständigkeit, Festigkeit und Härte bedeuten eine große Herausforderung an die spanende Bearbeitung derartiger Hochleistungswerkstoffe. Mittels Zerspanuntersuchungen beim Fräsen konnten unter Variation der Werkzeuggeometrie, der Schneidstoffe und der Prozessstrategie Parameterbeiche identifiziert werden, mit denen die prozesssichere Zerspanung partikelverstärkter Titanmatrix-Verbundwerkstoffe möglich ist.   Particle-reinforced titanium matrix composites ensure significant performance improvements of structural and functional high-temperature components. However, the high wear resistance, toughness and hardness due to particle reinforcement is a major challenge in machining these high performance materials. By conducting milling experiments with a variation of tool geometry, cutting material and process strategy, process parameters could be identified that enable efficient machining of particle-reinforced titanium matrix composites.


2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (26) ◽  
pp. 7272-7277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren N. Whitehurst ◽  
Nicola Cellini ◽  
Elizabeth A. McDevitt ◽  
Katherine A. Duggan ◽  
Sara C. Mednick

Throughout history, psychologists and philosophers have proposed that good sleep benefits memory, yet current studies focusing on the relationship between traditionally reported sleep features (e.g., minutes in sleep stages) and changes in memory performance show contradictory findings. This discrepancy suggests that there are events occurring during sleep that have not yet been considered. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) shows strong variation across sleep stages. Also, increases in ANS activity during waking, as measured by heart rate variability (HRV), have been correlated with memory improvement. However, the role of ANS in sleep-dependent memory consolidation has never been examined. Here, we examined whether changes in cardiac ANS activity (HRV) during a daytime nap were related to performance on two memory conditions (Primed and Repeated) and a nonmemory control condition on the Remote Associates Test. In line with prior studies, we found sleep-dependent improvement in the Primed condition compared with the Quiet Wake control condition. Using regression analyses, we compared the proportion of variance in performance associated with traditionally reported sleep features (model 1) vs. sleep features and HRV during sleep (model 2). For both the Primed and Repeated conditions, model 2 (sleep + HRV) predicted performance significantly better (73% and 58% of variance explained, respectively) compared with model 1 (sleep only, 46% and 26% of variance explained, respectively). These findings present the first evidence, to our knowledge, that ANS activity may be one potential mechanism driving sleep-dependent plasticity.


SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ullrich Bartsch ◽  
Laura J Corbin ◽  
Charlotte Hellmich ◽  
Michelle Taylor ◽  
Kayleigh E Easey ◽  
...  

Abstract The rs1344706 polymorphism in ZNF804A is robustly associated with schizophrenia and schizophrenia is, in turn, associated with abnormal non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep neurophysiology. To examine whether rs1344706 is associated with intermediate neurophysiological traits in the absence of disease, we assessed the relationship between genotype, sleep neurophysiology, and sleep-dependent memory consolidation in healthy participants. We recruited healthy adult males with no history of psychiatric disorder from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) birth cohort. Participants were homozygous for either the schizophrenia-associated ‘A’ allele (N=22) or the alternative ‘C’ allele (N=18) at rs1344706. Actigraphy, polysomnography (PSG) and a motor sequence task (MST) were used to characterize daily activity patterns, sleep neurophysiology and sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Average MST learning and sleep-dependent performance improvements were similar across genotype groups, albeit more variable in the AA group. During sleep after learning, CC participants showed increased slow-wave (SW) and spindle amplitudes, plus augmented coupling of SW activity across recording electrodes. SW and spindles in those with the AA genotype were insensitive to learning, whilst SW coherence decreased following MST training. Accordingly, NREM neurophysiology robustly predicted the degree of overnight motor memory consolidation in CC carriers, but not in AA carriers. We describe evidence that rs1344706 polymorphism in ZNF804A is associated with changes in the coordinated neural network activity that supports offline information processing during sleep in a healthy population. These findings highlight the utility of sleep neurophysiology in mapping the impacts of schizophrenia-associated common genetic variants on neural circuit oscillations and function.


2022 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. e2107661119
Author(s):  
William P. Dempsey ◽  
Zhuowei Du ◽  
Anna Nadtochiy ◽  
Colton D. Smith ◽  
Karl Czajkowski ◽  
...  

Defining the structural and functional changes in the nervous system underlying learning and memory represents a major challenge for modern neuroscience. Although changes in neuronal activity following memory formation have been studied [B. F. Grewe et al., Nature 543, 670–675 (2017); M. T. Rogan, U. V. Stäubli, J. E. LeDoux, Nature 390, 604–607 (1997)], the underlying structural changes at the synapse level remain poorly understood. Here, we capture synaptic changes in the midlarval zebrafish brain that occur during associative memory formation by imaging excitatory synapses labeled with recombinant probes using selective plane illumination microscopy. Imaging the same subjects before and after classical conditioning at single-synapse resolution provides an unbiased mapping of synaptic changes accompanying memory formation. In control animals and animals that failed to learn the task, there were no significant changes in the spatial patterns of synapses in the pallium, which contains the equivalent of the mammalian amygdala and is essential for associative learning in teleost fish [M. Portavella, J. P. Vargas, B. Torres, C. Salas, Brain Res. Bull. 57, 397–399 (2002)]. In zebrafish that formed memories, we saw a dramatic increase in the number of synapses in the ventrolateral pallium, which contains neurons active during memory formation and retrieval. Concurrently, synapse loss predominated in the dorsomedial pallium. Surprisingly, we did not observe significant changes in the intensity of synaptic labeling, a proxy for synaptic strength, with memory formation in any region of the pallium. Our results suggest that memory formation due to classical conditioning is associated with reciprocal changes in synapse numbers in the pallium.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document