Kondat Taly, Sasaki Yuka, Watanabe Takeo, Censor Nitzan
Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel.
School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 1;15(1):22137. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-06564-y.
Perceptual learning can significantly improve visual sensitivity even in fully matured adults. However, the ability to generalize learning to untrained conditions is often limited. While traditionally, perceptual learning is attributed to practice-dependent plasticity mechanisms, recent studies suggest that brief memory reactivations can efficiently improve visual perception, recruiting higher-level brain regions. Here we provide evidence that similar memory reactivation mechanisms promote generalization of offline learning mechanisms. Human participants encoded a visual discrimination task with the target stimulus at retinotopic location A. Then, brief memory reactivations of only five trials each were performed on separate days at location A. Generalization was tested at retinotopic location B. Results indicate remarkable enhancement of location B performance following memory reactivations, pointing to efficient offline generalization mechanisms. A control experiment with no reactivations showed minimal generalization. These findings suggest that reactivation-induced learning further enhances learning efficiency by promoting offline generalization mechanisms to untrained conditions, and can be further tested in additional learning domains, with potential future clinical implications.
即使在完全成熟的成年人中，知觉学习也能显著提高视觉敏感度。然而，将学习泛化到未训练条件的能力往往是有限的。传统上，知觉学习归因于依赖练习的可塑性机制，但最近的研究表明，短暂的记忆再激活可以有效地改善视觉感知，同时激活更高层次的脑区。在此，我们提供证据表明，类似的记忆再激活机制促进了离线学习机制的泛化。人类参与者对视网膜定位A处的目标刺激进行视觉辨别任务编码。然后，在不同的日子里，仅在A位置对每次仅五次试验进行短暂的记忆再激活。在视网膜定位B处测试泛化能力。结果表明，记忆再激活后，B位置的表现显著增强，这表明存在有效的离线泛化机制。无再激活的对照实验显示泛化能力极小。这些发现表明，再激活诱导的学习通过促进离线泛化机制到未训练条件，进一步提高了学习效率，并且可以在其他学习领域进一步测试，具有潜在的未来临床意义。
