Motor memory

The motor memory we use everyday-for sport, playing a musical instrument and even typing-is acquired through repeated practice and stored in the brain. New motor skills can be learned through practice, but often those skills can be all but lost by the following day. This loss of motor skills can be attributed to the storage of newly learned motor skills in short-term memory. By repeating the exercises on a daily basis, however, these skills become stored in long-term memory. In 2006, a team led by Soichi Nagao, head of the Laboratory for Motor Learning Control at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute (BSI), discovered that short-term motor memory is transferred to a different site to become long-term memory, and that brain activity while the body is at rest is important for creating long-term memory-more so than the brain activity while the body is working. With this discovery, research into the mechanism of motor memory is now breaking new ground.

Soichi Nagao

From Riken's lab a very interesting overview !!