Supplementary motor area (SMA) in music-visualization and motor tasks.
Researchers were looking at fMRI brain scans of professional ballet dancers to measure the long-term effects of learning. “We wanted to study how the brain gets activated with long-term rehearsal of complex dance motor sequences,” says Professor Joseph DeSouza, who studies and supports people with Parkinson’s disease. “The study outcome will help with understanding motor learning and developing effective treatments to rehabilitate the damaged or diseased brain.”
METHOD: 11 dancers (19-50 years of age) from the National Ballet of Canada were asked to visualize dance movements to music, while undergoing fMRI scanning. The scans measured Blood-Oxygen-Level-Dependent (BOLD) contrasts at 4 time points over 34 weeks, when they were learning a new dance.
Auditory activation in music-visualization task.
RESULTS: Initial learning and performance at 7 weeks led to increase in activation in cortical regions during visualization of the dance being learned when compared to the first week, shows a study on ballet cancers. However, at 34 weeks, it showed reduced activation in comparison to week seven. “Our results also suggest that understanding the neural underpinnings of complex motor tasks such as learning a new dance can be an effective model to study motor learning in the real world.”
Practice makes #Perfect“We found that in the learning process, our brain function makes an inverted ‘U’ learning pattern from a slow pace at the start, accelerating to a peak at the midpoint, before returning to the original pace, once we have mastered the task,” says DeSouza. “An everyday example would be learning to drive a manual car, where you constantly have to think about shifting the gears until you master it and then do it instinctively.” http://news.yorku.ca/2016/01/29/practice-makes-perfect-york-u-brain-study-confirms/
Subcortical activation in music-visualization task.
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