Explicit instructions and consolidation promote rewiring of automatic behaviors in the human mind

One major challenge in human behavior and brain sciences is to understand how we can rewire already existing perceptual, motor, cognitive, and social skills or habits. Here we aimed to characterize one aspect of rewiring, namely, how we can update our knowledge of sequential/statistical regularities when they change. The dynamics of rewiring was explored from learning to consolidation using a unique experimental design which is suitable to capture the effect of implicit and explicit processing and the proactive and retroactive interference. Our results indicate that humans can rewire their knowledge of such regularities incidentally, and consolidation has a critical role in this process. Moreover, old and new knowledge can coexist, leading to effective adaptivity of the human mind in the changing environment, although the execution of the recently acquired knowledge may be more fluent than the execution of the previously learned one. These findings can contribute to a better understanding of the cognitive processes underlying behavior change, and can provide insights into how we can boost behavior change in various contexts, such as sports, educational settings or psychotherapy

The use of audio stimulation to affect sensorimotor learning

Sensorimotor learning for the hand and fingers can be conducted using both hardware and software components, but the training regime is also important. Using repetitive sequence tapping allows measurement of defined metrics in a controlled, safe environment, and therefore statistical indications for subject improvement. The process of entrainment, when a subject’s own movements synchronize to an external signal, has been tested in prior studies for memorization and recognition, but has not been investigated for correlation with sensorimotor learning. This is tested with selected custom isochronic audio tones, combined with sequential finger tapping on a standard computer keyboard. Whilst there were no significant differences between specific frequencies, testing blocks done during tone conditions show subject improvement in reduced mean sequence times compared to pre-stimulation, with no significant change in subsequent post-stimulation blocks