Motor Memories

• motor memory is unique
• Some studies on Alzheimer’s Disease included participants who were previously musicians and couldn’t remember their own families, but they could still play beautiful music. Clearly, there’s a huge difference in the way that motor memories are formed
• Memories are thought to be encoded in the brain in the pattern of activity in networks of hundreds or thousands of neurons, sometimes distributed across distant brain regions
• memory trace
• When the researchers tested the animals’ memory of this new skill weeks later, they found that those mice that still remembered the skill showed increased activity in the same neurons that were first identified during the learning period, showing that these neurons were responsible for encoding the skill
• Two-photon Microscopy
• “engram neurons” reprogram themselves as the mice learned
• Motor cortex engram cells took on new synaptic inputs — potentially reflecting information about the reaching movement — and themselves formed powerful new output connections in a distant brain region called the dorsolateral Striatum — a key waystation through which the engram neurons can exert refined control over the animal’s movements.
• These findings suggest that, in addition to being dispersed, motor memories are highly redundant.
• The researchers say that as we repeat learned skills, we are continually reinforcing the motor engrams by building new connections — refining the skill. It’s what is meant by the term muscle memory — a refined, highly redundant network of motor engrams used so frequently that the associated skill seems automatic.
• Current thinking is that Parkinson’s Disease is the result of these motor engrams being blocked, but what if they’re actually being lost and people are forgetting these skills?