Learning to tie the knot:The acquisition of functional object representations by physical and observational experience

Here we examined neural substrates for physically and observationally learning to construct novel objects, and characterized brain regions associated with each kind of learning using fMRI. Each participant was assigned a training partner, and for five consecutive days practiced tying one group of knots ("tied" condition) or watched their partner tie different knots ("watched" condition) while a third set of knots remained untrained. Functional MRI was obtained prior to and immediately following the week of training while participants performed a visual knot-matching task. After training, a portion of left superior parietal lobule demonstrated a training by scan session interaction. This means this parietal region responded selectively to knots that participants had physically learned to tie in the post-training scan session but not the pre-training scan session. A conjunction analysis on the post-training scan data showed right intraparietal sulcus and right dorsal premotor cortex to respond when viewing images of knots from the tied and watched conditions compared to knots that were untrained during the post-training scan session. This suggests that these brain areas track both physical and observational learning. Together, the data provide preliminary evidence of engagement of brain regions associated with hand-object interactions when viewing objects associated with physical experience, and with observational experience without concurrent physical practice

Transient disruption of M1 during response planning impairs subsequent offline consolidation

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to probe the involvement of the left primary motor cortex (M1) in the consolidation of a sequencing skill. In particular we asked: (1) if M1 is involved in consolidation of planning processes prior to response execution (2) whether movement preparation and movement execution can undergo consolidation independently and (3) whether sequence consolidation can occur in a stimulus specific manner. TMS was applied to left M1 while subjects prepared left hand sequential finger responses for three different movement sequences, presented in an interleaved fashion. Subjects also trained on three control sequences, where no TMS was applied. Disruption of subsequent consolidation was observed, but only for sequences where subjects had been exposed to TMS during training. Further, reduced consolidation was only observed for movement preparation, not movement execution. We conclude that left M1 is causally involved in the consolidation of effective response planning for left hand movements prior to response execution, and mediates consolidation in a sequence specific manner. These results provide important new insights into the role of M1 in sequential memory consolidation and sequence response planning

A systematic review of group work interventions in UK high secure hospitals

Background: Rehabilitating high secure hospital patients poses significant challenges. Group work is thought to play a key role in patient recovery; however, there have been no reviews conducted specifically assessing group work interventions for high secure hospital patients. Objectives: To review the focus of group work interventions that are being implemented and evaluated with high secure hospital patients in the UK, and to examine the effectiveness of these interventions and the methods used to assess intervention effectiveness. Method: A systematic literature search combined with reference screening was conducted examining group work interventions with high secure hospital patients in the UK. Results: In total, 28 manuscripts (outlining 29 group work intervention evaluations) were identified for review inclusion. Across these, ten focuses of group work intervention emerged: anger/aggression, offence-specific, enhancing insight and understanding of mental illness, thinking skills/problem solving, substance misuse, self-harm, relationships, self-esteem and well-being, relapse prevention, and moving on. Positive outcomes were generally reported across all ten areas. Conclusions: Studies assessing the impact of group work interventions could be improved by increasing sample sizes, reducing sole reliance on self-report measures, employing clear statistical and clinical significance testing, and increasing the use of follow-up assessments and control groups

Ventral and dorsal stream contributions to the online control of immediate and delayed grasping: a TMS approach

According to Milner and Goodale's theory of the two visual streams, the dorsal (action) stream controls actions in real-time, whereas the ventral (perceptual) stream stores longer-term information for object identification. By this account, the dorsal stream subserves actions carried out immediately. However, when a delay is required before the response, the ventral (perceptual) stream is recruited. Indeed, a neuroimaging study from our lab has found reactivation of an area within the ventral stream, the lateral occipital (LO) cortex, at the time of action even when no visual stimulus was present. To tease apart the contribution of specific areas within the dorsal and ventral streams to the online control of grasping under immediate and delayed conditions, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to the anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS) and to LO. We show that while TMS to aIPS affected grasp under both immediate and delayed conditions, TMS to LO influenced grasp only under delayed movement conditions. The effects of TMS were restricted to early movement kinematics (i.e. within 300 ms) due to the transient nature of TMS, which was always delivered simultaneous with movement onset. We discuss the implications of our findings in relation to interactions between the dorsal and ventral streams

Direct comparison of the physical experience contrast (tied > untrained; in red) and the observational experience contrast (watched > untrained; in blue) from the post-training scan session, rendered on the same averaged brain image.

<p>This conjunction analysis highlights the two brain regions that emerged (overlap between red and blue regions, visualised in yellow) where both the tied > untrained and watched > untrained contrasts reached the significance threshold of <i>p</i>_uncorr. < 0.005, masked by the sensorimotor brain regions illustrated in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0185044#pone.0185044.g004" target="_blank">Fig 4</a>. The plot illustrates the parameter estimates extracted from this region of the right IPS and right PMd. As this contrast was evaluated on the post-training scan session data only, and because all the knot categories were equally untrained/unfamiliar during the pre-training scan session, the percent signal change values from this same region during the pre-training scan session are visualised in outlined bars on the left side of the plot for illustration/comparison purposes only (i.e., these values were not part of the imaging contrast visualised to the left).</p

Results from the knot-training procedures.

<p>A: participants’ tying proficiency across training days. B: participants’ tying proficiency with knots from all 3 training categories during the post-training knot tying evaluation. In each plot, error bars represent the standard error of the mean.</p

Regions associated with discriminating pairs of knots with associated tying experience (compared to untrained knots) and pairs of knots with associated observational experience (compared to untrained knots).

<p>Regions associated with discriminating pairs of knots with associated tying experience (compared to untrained knots) and pairs of knots with associated observational experience (compared to untrained knots).</p