Post-Movement Beta Rebound in Sensorimotor Cortex Endures One Week After Three Days of Practice

Abstract

The post-movement beta rebound (PMBR) is the tightly coupled increase in beta power that occurs in the sensorimotor cortex upon movement termination. It is a potential biomarker of motor control; abnormal responses could signal disease. With respect to its interaction with learning, both decreases and increases have been observed. In this study, we examined the effect of two types of practice schedules, blocked and randomized, on memory retention one week later. A blocked schedule leads to better performance during acquisition but poorer performance during long-term retention, a phenomenon known as the contextual interference effect. The aim of the present study is two-fold: (1) test the contextual interference effect using a visuomotor bimanual tracking task (2) determine whether three days of practice leads to a decreased PMBR at retention test one week later. We hypothesized that learning with either schedule would lead to decreased PMBR. Our data demonstrated no main effect of practice schedule. It is most likely that the task variants were not sufficiently different to induce the contextual interference phenomenon. Further, the PMBR was not attenuated by learning. It was evident before and after three days of practice. This has important implications for its putative role as a biomarker.