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Schlagwörter:
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Zusammenfassung:
The ability to consolidate procedural memories declines with increasing
age. Prior knowledge enhances learning and memory consolidation of novel
but related information in various domains. Here, we present evidence
that prior motor experience-in our case piano skills-increases
procedural learning and has a protective effect against age-related
decline for the consolidation of novel but related manual movements. In
our main experiment, we tested 128 participants with a sequential
finger-tapping motor task during two sessions 24 hours apart. We
observed enhanced online learning speed and offline memory consolidation
for piano players. Enhanced memory consolidation was driven by a strong
effect in older participants, whereas younger participants did not
benefit significantly from prior piano experience. In a follow up
independent control experiment, this compensatory effect of piano
experience was not visible after a brief offline period of 30 minutes,
hence requiring an extended consolidation window potentially involving
sleep. Through a further control experiment, we rejected the possibility
that the decreased effect in younger participants was caused by training
saturation. We discuss our results in the context of the neurobiological
schema approach and suggest that prior experience has the potential to
rescue memory consolidation from age-related cognitive decline.
