Intact Acquisition and Short-Term Retention of Non-Motor Procedural Learning in Parkinson's Disease.

Procedural learning is a form of memory where people implicitly acquire a skill through repeated practice. People with Parkinson's disease (PD) have been found to acquire motor adaptation, a form of motor procedural learning, similarly to healthy older adults but they have deficits in long-term...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Muriel T N Panouillères, George K Tofaris, Peter Brown, Ned Jenkinson
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2016-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149224
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1850212943957852160
author Muriel T N Panouillères
George K Tofaris
Peter Brown
Ned Jenkinson
author_facet Muriel T N Panouillères
George K Tofaris
Peter Brown
Ned Jenkinson
author_sort Muriel T N Panouillères
collection DOAJ
description Procedural learning is a form of memory where people implicitly acquire a skill through repeated practice. People with Parkinson's disease (PD) have been found to acquire motor adaptation, a form of motor procedural learning, similarly to healthy older adults but they have deficits in long-term retention. A similar pattern of normal learning on initial exposure with a deficit in retention seen on subsequent days has also been seen in mirror-reading, a form of non-motor procedural learning. It is a well-studied fact that disrupting sleep will impair the consolidation of procedural memories. Given the prevalence of sleep disturbances in PD, the lack of retention on following days seen in these studies could simply be a side effect of this well-known symptom of PD. Because of this, we wondered whether people with PD would present with deficits in the short-term retention of a non-motor procedural learning task, when the test of retention was done the same day as the initial exposure. The aim of the present study was then to investigate acquisition and retention in the immediate short term of cognitive procedural learning using the mirror-reading task in people with PD. This task involved two conditions: one where triads of mirror-inverted words were always new that allowed assessing the learning of mirror-reading skill and another one where some of the triads were presented repeatedly during the experiment that allowed assessing the word-specific learning. People with PD both ON and OFF their normal medication were compared to healthy older adults and young adults. Participants were re-tested 50 minutes break after initial exposure to probe for short-term retention. The results of this study show that all groups of participants acquired and retained the two skills (mirror-reading and word-specific) similarly. These results suggest that neither healthy ageing nor the degeneration within the basal ganglia that occurs in PD does affect the mechanisms that underpin the acquisition of these new non-motor procedural learning skills and their short-term memories.
format Article
id doaj-art-32934d9d051f4e0aa2ce0385a9b46ea8
institution OA Journals
issn 1932-6203
language English
publishDate 2016-01-01
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
record_format Article
series PLoS ONE
spelling doaj-art-32934d9d051f4e0aa2ce0385a9b46ea82025-08-20T02:09:14ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032016-01-01112e014922410.1371/journal.pone.0149224Intact Acquisition and Short-Term Retention of Non-Motor Procedural Learning in Parkinson's Disease.Muriel T N PanouillèresGeorge K TofarisPeter BrownNed JenkinsonProcedural learning is a form of memory where people implicitly acquire a skill through repeated practice. People with Parkinson's disease (PD) have been found to acquire motor adaptation, a form of motor procedural learning, similarly to healthy older adults but they have deficits in long-term retention. A similar pattern of normal learning on initial exposure with a deficit in retention seen on subsequent days has also been seen in mirror-reading, a form of non-motor procedural learning. It is a well-studied fact that disrupting sleep will impair the consolidation of procedural memories. Given the prevalence of sleep disturbances in PD, the lack of retention on following days seen in these studies could simply be a side effect of this well-known symptom of PD. Because of this, we wondered whether people with PD would present with deficits in the short-term retention of a non-motor procedural learning task, when the test of retention was done the same day as the initial exposure. The aim of the present study was then to investigate acquisition and retention in the immediate short term of cognitive procedural learning using the mirror-reading task in people with PD. This task involved two conditions: one where triads of mirror-inverted words were always new that allowed assessing the learning of mirror-reading skill and another one where some of the triads were presented repeatedly during the experiment that allowed assessing the word-specific learning. People with PD both ON and OFF their normal medication were compared to healthy older adults and young adults. Participants were re-tested 50 minutes break after initial exposure to probe for short-term retention. The results of this study show that all groups of participants acquired and retained the two skills (mirror-reading and word-specific) similarly. These results suggest that neither healthy ageing nor the degeneration within the basal ganglia that occurs in PD does affect the mechanisms that underpin the acquisition of these new non-motor procedural learning skills and their short-term memories.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149224
spellingShingle Muriel T N Panouillères
George K Tofaris
Peter Brown
Ned Jenkinson
Intact Acquisition and Short-Term Retention of Non-Motor Procedural Learning in Parkinson's Disease.
PLoS ONE
title Intact Acquisition and Short-Term Retention of Non-Motor Procedural Learning in Parkinson's Disease.
title_full Intact Acquisition and Short-Term Retention of Non-Motor Procedural Learning in Parkinson's Disease.
title_fullStr Intact Acquisition and Short-Term Retention of Non-Motor Procedural Learning in Parkinson's Disease.
title_full_unstemmed Intact Acquisition and Short-Term Retention of Non-Motor Procedural Learning in Parkinson's Disease.
title_short Intact Acquisition and Short-Term Retention of Non-Motor Procedural Learning in Parkinson's Disease.
title_sort intact acquisition and short term retention of non motor procedural learning in parkinson s disease
url https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149224
work_keys_str_mv AT murieltnpanouilleres intactacquisitionandshorttermretentionofnonmotorprocedurallearninginparkinsonsdisease
AT georgektofaris intactacquisitionandshorttermretentionofnonmotorprocedurallearninginparkinsonsdisease
AT peterbrown intactacquisitionandshorttermretentionofnonmotorprocedurallearninginparkinsonsdisease
AT nedjenkinson intactacquisitionandshorttermretentionofnonmotorprocedurallearninginparkinsonsdisease