MOTOR LEARNING RECOGNITION MEMORY IN FRONTAL CORTEX

这个子项目是众多研究子项目之一

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Implicit motor learning is characterized by a lack of awareness for the learning process and its content (Stadler and Frensch 1997) and can be studied using the Serial Reaction Time Task (SRTT) [Nissen and Bullemer, 1987; Keele et al., 1995; Grafton et al., 1998; Willingham et al., 1997, Seidler et al., 2002a]. In this task subjects respond to one of four illuminated boxes by pressing a corresponding key using the four fingers of the right hand. If, unbeknownst to the subject, the visual stimuli are presented as a complex sequence, subjects learn the associated sequence of finger movements, often without being aware of the sequence. There has been much debate in the literature as to the substrates of awareness of learning in this particular task. One of the difficulties has been to assess whether or not the subjects are aware of the sequence and how strong that awareness actually is. The focus of the current project is to examine the substrate of explicit awareness in subjects having been trained in the SRTT.