Punishments and rewards both modestly impair visuomotor memory retention

The effects of post‐learning alcohol ingestion on human motor memory consolidation

“…The motor task to be learned was a gradual visuomotor adaptation protocol. The present apparatus and single‐trial procedures used for every visuomotor adaptation block of the present work are similar to previous work (Hamel, Dallaire‐Jean, et al, 2021; Hamel, de la Fontaine, et al, 2021; Hamel, Lepage, & Bernier, et al, 2021). Briefly, participants performed centre‐out reaching movements towards one of five targets located around a circular array (10 cm radius) from the centre of the virtual environment.…”

“…During the retention session, the persistence of reach aftereffects was evaluated to infer the extent of motor memory consolidation. (Hamel et al, 2017, 2019; Hamel, Dallaire‐Jean, et al, 2021; Hamel, de la Fontaine, et al, 2021). The experimental visit pairs differed based on the beverage's content: one pair of experimental visits for each of the PBO, MED and HIGH conditions.…”

“…Experimental visits were carried out in pairs; participants took part in an acquisition session (lasting ~3 h), followed by a retention session 24 h later. During the acquisition session, participants had to reach visual targets while learning to compensate for a gradually introduced visual deviation (Hamel et al, 2017, 2019; Hamel, Dallaire‐Jean, et al, 2021; Hamel, de la Fontaine, et al, 2021). During the retention session, the persistence of reach aftereffects was evaluated to infer the extent of motor memory consolidation.…”

“…The purpose of the dominant hand acquisition was to induce learning and then manipulate memory consolidation through alcohol ingestion (see Figure 1). The motor task to be learned consisted of compensating for a gradually introduced visual deviation (see Figure 1b), which was to prevent participants from gaining awareness of the deviation, therefore allowing to carry out a fully within‐subject learning design (Hamel, Dallaire‐Jean, et al, 2021; Hamel, de la Fontaine, et al, 2021; Hamel, Lepage, & Bernier, et al, 2021). Using a gradual rather than abrupt deviation was also to minimize the possible anterograde interference with the subsequent learning in the non‐dominant hand session, as adaptation through a gradually introduced sensorimotor perturbation does not transfer between limbs (Hamel, Lepage, & Bernier, et al, 2021; Malfait & Ostry, 2004; Werner et al, 2019).…”

“…Namely, participants either ingested a placebo (PBO), a medium (MED) or high dose (HIGH) dose of alcohol, designed to induce maximal breath alcohol concentrations (BrAC) of 0.00%, ~0.05% and ~0.095%, respectively. To assess consolidation, retention was evaluated through reach aftereffects 24 h later (Hamel et al, 2017; Hamel et al, 2019; Hamel et al, 2021) when participants were sober again. Based on previous work on declarative memories (Carlyle et al, 2017; Parker et al, 1981), it was hypothesized that alcohol would enhance motor memory consolidation in a dose‐dependent manner: HIGH would yield greater retention than MED and MED would yield greater retention levels than PBO.…”