Visual-oculomotor interactions facilitate consolidation of perceptual learning

Abstract

Visual skill learning is commonly considered a manifestation of brain plasticity. Following encoding, consolidation of the skill may result in between-session performance gains. A great volume of studies have demonstrated that during the offline consolidation interval, the skill is susceptible to external inputs that modify the preformed representation of the memory, affecting future performance. However, while basic visual perceptual learning is thought to be mediated by sensory brain regions or their higher-order readout pathways, the possibility of visual-oculomotor interactions affecting the consolidation interval and reshaping visual learning remains uncharted. Motivated by findings mapping connections between oculomotor behavior and visual performance, we examined whether visual consolidation can be facilitated by visualoculomotor interactions. To this aim, we paired reactivation of an oculomotor memory with consolidation of a typical visual texture discrimination task. Importantly, the oculomotor memory was encoded by learning of the pure motor component of the movement, removing visual cues. When brief reactivation of the oculomotor memory preceded the visual task, visual gains were substantially enhanced compared with those achieved by visual practice per se and were strongly related to the magnitude of oculomotor gains, suggesting that the brain utilizes oculomotor memory to enhance basic visual perception.

Sleep does not aid the generalisation of binocular disparity‐based learning to the other visual hemifield

“…Oculomotor learning is known to benefit from sleep (e.g. Albouy et al., 2006), and it has recently been demonstrated that training and re‐activating an unrelated oculomotor memory can enhance TDT performance (Klorfeld‐Auslender & Censor, 2019). By effectively suppressing oculomotor learning, our protocol may further reduce the number of memory traces that could potentially benefit from sleep.…”

Decision-making processes in perceptual learning depend on effectors

“…This resonates with theories that frame VPL as a change in the readout of visual information by decision-making areas (Dosher & Lu, 2017). A role of motor areas in VPL is further suggested by several behavioral findings, e.g., that motor tasks improve VPL consolidation (Klorfeld-Auslender & Censor, 2019), and, reversely, that VPL can improve oculomotor performance (Szpiro, Spering, & Carrasco, 2014).…”