Acquisition and Retention of Motor Memories in Adults and Typically Developing Children

Overview

Our motor skills require motor memories without which our behavior is only reflexes and stereotypies. The way which these memories form in the human brain constitute therefore a major challenge for neuroscience research. Some a lot of evidence suggests that any new motor skills is acquired in the cerebellum and then persisted in the cortex. This vision seems however caricature, the formation of memories motor probably requiring complex remodeling of cortico-cerebellar networks. The MotorMemo project aspires to better understand this remodeling, by testing more specifically the hypothesis of cerebellar weakening and strengthening cortical as a substrate for the formation of motor memories. A longitudinal study using a sensorimotor adaptation protocol, fMRI as well as a developmental perspective is proposed to verify this hypothesis.

A fundamental human faculty is that of adapting our motor behavior to changing environmental conditions. This faculty is comparable to an apprenticeship adaptive during which the individual updates, on a trial and error basis, the correspondence between sensory inputs and the resulting motor commands. Once updated, these correspondences or internal models allow the individual to produce a behavior precise and reproducible motor. The issue of model acquisition and retention internal movement is therefore central to our understanding of motor control. Relatedly, this question constitutes a gateway to a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms of learning and procedural memory. The MotorMemo project therefore aims to study the formation of internal models of movement in the human brain, with the particularity of being interested in the correlates cerebral processes of acquiring and retaining an internal model of visuomotor transformation in healthy children (8-12 years) and adults.