Purpose: Sleep following motor learning training can have a positive effect on the consolidation of a new motor task. However, it has not been investigated what effect the quality of sleep can have when testing on a visuomotor accuracy tracking task (VATT). The aim of this study was to investigate whether awakenings during the night after acquisition would affect the consolidation of VATT at a 12-hour retention test.
Methods: Eighteen healthy volunteers (14 men, 4 women) participated in the study. The participants were aged 25.6 ± 1.6 years, had a height of 1.78 ± 0.10 meters and weighed 78.6 ± .8.4 kg. The participants had VATT acquisition starting between 7pm-10pm and retention tests occurred 12-hours later. The participants were divided into two groups: a disturbed sleep group and a control group. At the first session, participants performed a baseline test and six acquisition trials of VATT. At the second session, participants completed a retention test and a plateau test of VATT. The disturbed sleep group was awakened once every hour the night between the two sessions. Further measures included sleepiness using the Stanford sleepiness scale, handedness using the Edinburgh handedness inventory, and a sleep diary was filled out.
Results: The participants in the sleep disturbed group had a significant worse quality of sleep the night between acquisition than the control group (p = 0.002) and had a higher score on the Stanford sleepiness scale at the retention trials (p = 0.021). An Anova between all VATT trials and groups showed a significant main effect of time. There was an improvement of 36.4 % from baseline to the last acquisition trial across groups. There was a significant worsening with -8.1 % from the last acquisition trial to 12 hour retention across groups. The ANOVA showed no significant main effect of group (p = 0.898) or the interaction between group and time (p = 0.589).
Conclusion: These findings suggest the quality of sleep does not seem to have an effect on the consolidation of VATT. However, the disturbed sleep period was only one night and therefore does not provide information on longer periods with disturbed sleep.