Vassiliadis Pierre, Lete Aegryan, Duque Julie, Derosiere Gerard
Institute of Neuroscience, Université Catholique de Louvain, 53, Avenue Mounier, 1200 Brussels, Belgium.
Defitech Chair for Clinical Neuroengineering, Center for Neuroprosthetics (CNP) and Brain Mind Institute (BMI), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), 1202 Geneva, Switzerland.
iScience. 2022 Apr 25;25(5):104290. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104290. eCollection 2022 May 20.
Reward timing, that is, the delay after which reward is delivered following an action is known to strongly influence reinforcement learning. Here, we asked if reward timing could also modulate how people learn and consolidate new motor skills. In 60 healthy participants, we found that delaying reward delivery by a few seconds influenced motor learning. Indeed, training with a short reward delay (1 s) induced continuous improvements in performance, whereas a long reward delay (6 s) led to initially high learning rates that were followed by an early plateau in the learning curve and a lower performance at the end of training. Participants who learned the skill with a long reward delay also exhibited reduced overnight memory consolidation. Overall, our data show that reward timing affects the dynamics and consolidation of motor learning, a finding that could be exploited in future rehabilitation programs.
奖励时机，即行动后给予奖励的延迟时间，已知会对强化学习产生强烈影响。在此，我们探讨奖励时机是否也能调节人们学习和巩固新运动技能的方式。在60名健康参与者中，我们发现将奖励交付延迟几秒钟会影响运动学习。确实，短奖励延迟（1秒）训练能使表现持续改善，而长奖励延迟（6秒）则导致最初学习率较高，但随后学习曲线提前达到平稳期，且训练结束时表现较低。奖励延迟时间长的参与者在夜间的记忆巩固也有所减少。总体而言，我们的数据表明奖励时机影响运动学习的动态过程和巩固，这一发现可用于未来的康复计划。
