Motor learning in children

众所周知，儿童在学习语言方面具有早熟的能力;他们在学习运动技能方面是否具有类似的能力？ 儿童运动学习的定量研究仍然非常有限。 我们建议研究一种简单形式的运动学习在步行，这不需要理解或意图的儿童，从而使我们能够研究非常年幼的儿童。 运动任务是在分裂带跑步机上行走，其中带以不同的速度运行（一个带是另一个的两倍）。 当第一次在这样的跑步机上行走时，成人和儿童在行走中表现出不对称性，看起来像跛行。 随着持续步行，成年人在大约60步后使他们的步行对称。 我们以前的工作表明，儿童在9个月大时也可以学习这项任务的某些方面，但学习的时间过程与成人不同。 我们将确定孩子们是否能在几天内记住这些知识，以及练习时间表如何影响记忆。 我们早期的研究进一步表明，如果带速度逐渐不同，而不是从一开始就非常不同，孩子们可能会学得更好。 我们将操纵皮带速度是如何引入的，看看它如何影响儿童的学习。 最后，我们想确定参与学习这项任务的大脑区域。 我们将使用成年受试者，并使用经颅直流电刺激（tDCS）改变大脑不同区域的兴奋性，因为他们正在进行这种学习。tDCS可以非侵入性地使大脑的特定区域或多或少地兴奋，所以如果大脑的刺激区域对学习很重要，它应该会改变学习。 大脑中被刺激的区域是基于来自儿童独特学习行为的假设。 通过对比暴露于不同脑刺激区域的不同受试者组，我们希望确定参与这种学习形式的大脑区域。大脑这些区域的发育时间过程可以帮助我们解释幼儿的运动学习。

Children are known to have precocious abilities in the learning of languages; do they have similar abilities in the learning of motor skills? Quantitative study of motor learning in children remains very limited. We propose to study a simple form of motor learning in walking, which does not require understanding or intention by the child, thereby allowing us to study very young children. The motor task is to walk on a split-belt treadmill, in which the belts are run at different speeds (one belt twice as fast as the other). When first walking on such a treadmill, adults and children show asymmetry in their walking, which looks like a limp. With continued walking, adults make their walking symmetric after ~60 strides. Our previous work has shown that children can also learn some aspects of this task by the age of 9 months, but the time course of the learning is different from adults. We will determine whether children retain this learning over days, and how the practice schedule affects the retention. Our earlier work further suggested that children may learn better if the belt speeds are gradually made different, rather than being very different right from the start. We will manipulate how the belt speeds are introduced to see how it affects the learning in children. Finally, we want to determine the regions of the brain that are involved in learning this task. We will use adult subjects, and alter the excitability of different regions of the brain using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as they are performing this learning. tDCS can non-invasively make specific regions of the brain more or less excitable, so it should alter the learning if the stimulated region of the brain is important for the learning. The regions of the brain to be stimulated are based on hypotheses derived from the unique learning behaviour in children. By contrasting different groups of subjects exposed to different regions of brain stimulation, we hope to identify brain regions involved in this form of learning. The developmental time course of these regions of the brain may then help us explain the motor learning in young children.