The Functional Anatomy of Sleep-dependent Visual Skill Learning
Abstract
Learning of procedural skills develops gradually, with performance improving significantly with practice. But improvement on some tasks, including a visual texture discrimination task, continues in the absence of further practice, expressly during periods of sleep and not across equivalent waking episodes. Here we report that the brain activation revealed significantly different patterns of performance-related functional activity following a night of sleep relative to 1 h post-training without intervening sleep. When task activation patterns after a night of sleep were compared with activation patterns without intervening sleep (1 h post-training), significant regions of increased signal intensity were observed in the primary visual cortex, the occipital temporal junction, the medial temporal lobe and the inferior parietal lobe. In contrast, a region of decreased signal intensity was found in the right temporal pole. Corroborating these condition differences, correlations between behavioural performance and brain activation revealed significantly different patterns of performance-related functional activity following a night of sleep relative to those without intervening sleep. Together, these data provide evidence of overnight bi-directional changes in functional anatomy, differences that may form the neural basis of sleep-dependent learning expressed on this task.
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Sleep-dependent changes in brain activity indicative of reorganization of memory representations have been reported for procedural tasks like sequence finger tapping and visual texture discrimination.
“Finally, sleep-dependent changes in brain activity indicative for a reorganization of memory representations have also been reported for procedural tasks like sequences finger tapping and visual texture discrimination (384, 1292, 1293).”
From About Sleep's Role in Memory (2013) · cites this paper as [1293]
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- Authors
- Walker, M. P., Stickgold, R., Jolesz, F. A., & Yoo, S.-S.
- Affiliations
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (US)
- Brigham and Women's Hospital (US)
- Corresponding author
- Walker, Matthew P.
- Venue
- Cerebral Cortex
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2005-02-09
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1666-1675
- ISSN
- 1047-3211 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-2199
- OpenAlex
- W2100461440
- Cited by
- 121
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 4.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cerebral Cortex (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R21MH067754, R01MH065292, MH-48832, R03MH069935, MH069935, R01MH048832, MH 65292, MH67754)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Sleep and Wakefulness Research
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- sleep-dependent learning, primary visual cortex, medial temporal lobe, inferior parietal lobule, brain activation
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain Mapping, Discrimination Learning, Evoked Potentials, Visual, Female, Humans, Male, Nerve Net, Neuronal Plasticity, Psychomotor Performance, Sleep, Visual Cortex, Visual Perception
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