REM Sleep and Visuo-Motor Skill Learning: A Correlational Study

Sleep and Hypnosis: A Journal of Clinical Neuroscience and Psychopathology Volume 9, Number 2, Year 2007

Michael Schredl, Ph.D., Daniel Erlacher, Ph.D.

A considerable amount of studies have shown that sleep facilitates memory consolidation. For procedural memory, some findings support the association with REM sleep but other studies linked motor learning with stage 2 sleep. The present study investigated the relationship between sleep physiology and a procedural task (mirror tracing) involving visual and motor learning. The results indicate that overnight improvement is related to the amount of REM sleep but not to any other sleep stage and thus complement the findings obtained by a REM deprivation study and an early/late night deprivation study. Future research should aim at identifying the underlying mechanisms and the brain areas which are involved in different procedural memory tasks such as perceptual learning, motor learning, visuo-motor learning and complex motor learning (e.g., piano playing, trampolining).

Keywords: Procedural memory, REM sleep, dream content.