How do people learn new movement patterns and alternate between them?

In a new JNeurosci paper, Kahori Kita and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University explored how people switch between intuitive motor skills they know and newly learned movement patterns. 

Study volunteers frequently made errors switching between more innate movements and new ones. These errors were largely because people persistently stuck to the movement patterns they used before the switch. Notes Kita, “People made similar errors when switching from the intuitive to the new skill, as when switching from the new skill to the intuitive one.” A second group of people learned two new movement-based skills. It was initially even more difficult for these participants to switch between newly learned movements, but they improved at switching between skills with more training over a couple of days. 

These findings suggest that switching between movement patterns is difficult, especially for newly learned motor skills. However, practice improves the ability to switch between movements. The researchers hope to continue exploring how newly learned motor skills are remembered and how these memories are retrieved to adeptly perform these movements later. 

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About JNeurosci 

JNeurosci was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship. 

About The Society for Neuroscience 

The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 35,000 members in more than 95 countries.