Reshaping the Motor Engram - An Online Crowdsourcing Study.

NCT05511480 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: 00118731
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 404
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

A critical point in learning and memory research is whether memories, once consolidated, remain unchanged or whether they continue to undergo plastic changes and remodeling. While previous research has focused on experimental destabilization during early stages of the memory life cycle, i.e., during encoding or early consolidation, experimental data that provides information about the effect of destabilization interventions on well-consolidated memories is still missing. This is particularly true for the procedural memory domain, such as learning a sensorimotor skill. This project is designed to characterize the effect of a single behavioral interference intervention on a previously consolidated sensorimotor skill in a large sample of healthy volunteers recruited through an online crowdsourcing platform. In a longitudinal design, participants will perform an implicit sequence learning task over five consecutive sessions, followed by an interference intervention in session six and a follow-up evaluation of the stability of the learned skill in session seven. The experimental design includes two levels of sequential information (spatial and temporal), which allows the testing of the specificity of the interference intervention. Behavioral performance throughout the experimental sessions is acquired via the manual input on the participants' computer keyboards and used to extract the learning rate and the interference effect (primary outcome).

Conditions

Healthy Volunteers

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (2)

• Immediate interference rate (change in performance precision)

  Performance in the learning task is derived from the precision of timing of key presses relative to the occurrence and duration of visual cues presented on the computer screen. The interference rate is operationalized as the change in performance precision over time. The immediate interference effect is analyzed based on the change in performance from before (pre-interference) the interference intervention to directly after the interference intervention in session six (post-interference). This change is normalized to the performance at baseline (pre-interference session six) and computed as \[(post-interference - pre-interference)/pre-interference\*100\].

  six days

• Delayed interference rate (change in performance precision)

  The delayed interference rate is calculated in analogy to the immediate interference effects with a 24-hours latency of the post-interference measure. Delayed interference is analyzed based on the change in performance from before the interference intervention (pre-interference in session six) to 24 hours after the interference intervention in session seven (24hours post-interference). This change is normalized to the performance at baseline (pre-interference session six) and computed as \[(24 hours post-interference - pre-interference)/pre-interference\*100\].

  seven days

Secondary Outcomes (1)

• Learning rate (change in performance precision)

  five days

Study Arms (4)

Interference on sequence 1

EXPERIMENTAL

The interference intervention (session six) will be applied to one of the two previously learned sequences (temporal).

Behavioral: Interference through learning of a competing motor skill.

Interference on sequence 2

EXPERIMENTAL

The interference intervention (session six) will be applied to one of the two previously learned sequences (spatial).

Behavioral: Interference through learning of a competing motor skill.

Interference on sequences 1 and 2

EXPERIMENTAL

The interference intervention (session six) will be applied to both of the two previously learned sequences (temporal and spatial).

Behavioral: Interference through learning of a competing motor skill.

No interference

SHAM COMPARATOR

The interference intervention (session six) will be applied.

Behavioral: No interference

Interventions

Interference through learning of a competing motor skill. BEHAVIORAL

Interference through the learning of a competing motor skill.

Interference on sequence 1; Interference on sequence 2; Interference on sequences 1 and 2

No interference BEHAVIORAL

No interference through the continuation of learning same motor skill

No interference

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years+
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• registered Amazon Mechanical Turk users (called 'workers')
• with \>95% approval rate on all previous Amazon Mechanical Turk assignments
• location in North America or Europe
• ≥18 years of age
• not having participated in this experiment before

You may not qualify if:

• prior participation in this experiment

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Medical University of South Carolina: lead

Study Sites (1)

Medical University of South Carolina

Charleston, South Carolina, 29425, United States

Location

Study Officials

• Kirstin-Friederike Heise, PhD

  Medical University of South Carolina

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: TRIPLE
• Who Masked: PARTICIPANT, INVESTIGATOR, OUTCOMES ASSESSOR
• Purpose: BASIC SCIENCE
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Assistant Professor

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: August 11, 2022
• First Posted: August 23, 2022
• Study Start: August 1, 2022
• Primary Completion: June 30, 2023
• Study Completion: June 30, 2023
• Last Updated: August 16, 2023

Record last verified: 2023-08

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will share
• Shared Documents: STUDY PROTOCOL, SAP, ICF, CSR, ANALYTIC CODE

Locations

US (1)