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