The functional significance of motor-cortical oscillations for implicit and explicit motor learning

Objectives: Motor learning occurs during practice but also between practice sessions. A specific significance of the primary motor cortex (M1) for early consolidation has been suggested. We here investigate alterations of motor-cortical oscillations associated with acquisition and early consolidation of a newly learned motor sequence. Methods: Fifteen healthy subjects were trained on a serial reaction time task. Data were compared with performance during a randomly varying sequence. Event-related desynchronization (ERD) as a measure of motor-cortical excitability at alpha (8 – 12 Hz) and beta (13 – 30 Hz) freque…