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OpenTrials
Completed

NCT Number: NCT05511480

Reshaping the Motor Engram - An Online Crowdsourcing Study.

A critical point in learning and memory research is whether memories, once consolidated, remain unchanged or whether they continue to undergo plastic changes and remodeling. While previous research has focused on experimental destabilization during early stages of the memory life cycle, i.e., during encoding or early consolidation, experimental data that provides information about the effect of destabilization interventions on well-consolidated memories is still missing. This is particularly true for the procedural memory domain, such as learning a sensorimotor skill. This project is designed to characterize the effect of a single behavioral interference intervention on a previously consolidated sensorimotor skill in a large sample of healthy volunteers recruited through an online crowdsourcing platform. In a longitudinal design, participants will perform an implicit sequence learning task over five consecutive sessions, followed by an interference intervention in session six and a follow-up evaluation of the stability of the learned skill in session seven. The experimental design includes two levels of sequential information (spatial and temporal), which allows the testing of the specificity of the interference intervention. Behavioral performance throughout the experimental sessions is acquired via the manual input on the participants' computer keyboards and used to extract the learning rate and the interference effect (primary outcome).

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Key information

Conditions

Healthy Volunteers

Age range

18 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

Medical University of South Carolina

Charleston, South Carolina, 29425, United States

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • registered Amazon Mechanical Turk users (called 'workers')
  • with >95% approval rate on all previous Amazon Mechanical Turk assignments
  • location in North America or Europe
  • ≥18 years of age
  • not having participated in this experiment before

Exclusion criteria

  • prior participation in this experiment

Treatment and study plan

Interference through learning of a competing motor skill.

Behavioral

Interference through the learning of a competing motor skill.

No interference

Behavioral

No interference through the continuation of learning same motor skill

Primary outcomes

  1. Immediate interference rate (change in performance precision)

    Time frame: six days

    Performance in the learning task is derived from the precision of timing of key presses relative to the occurrence and duration of visual cues presented on the computer screen. The interference rate is operationalized as the change in performance precision over time.

    The immediate interference effect is analyzed based on the change in performance from before (pre-interference) the interference intervention to directly after the interference intervention in session six (post-interference). This change is normalized to the performance at baseline (pre-interference session six) and computed as [(post-interference - pre-interference)/pre-interference*100].

  2. Delayed interference rate (change in performance precision)

    Time frame: seven days

    The delayed interference rate is calculated in analogy to the immediate interference effects with a 24-hours latency of the post-interference measure. Delayed interference is analyzed based on the change in performance from before the interference intervention (pre-interference in session six) to 24 hours after the interference intervention in session seven (24hours post-interference). This change is normalized to the performance at baseline (pre-interference session six) and computed as [(24 hours post-interference - pre-interference)/pre-interference*100].

Secondary outcomes

  1. Learning rate (change in performance precision)

    Time frame: five days

    Skill learning is defined based on the precision of timing of key presses relative to the occurrence and duration of visual cues presented on the computer screen. Skill learning is indexed by increased precision over time, operationalized as declining deviation of key on- and offsets from the timing of cue on- and offsets. Learning rate is the absolute change of precision over the learning phase of five days, which is expected to follow an asymptotic exponential function.

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

Medical University of South Carolina

Other

Registry information

Acronym: FORGET

Important dates

Study start
2022
Primary completion
2023
Study completion
2023
First posted
Aug 23, 2022
Registry last updated
Aug 16, 2023

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

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