Temporary gains in performance during practice or in response to some perturbation are often termed motor adaptation, a transient form of learning.
At the behavioral level, research focuses on the design and effect of the main components driving motor learning, i.e. the structure of practice and the feedback.
Although varied practice may lead to poor performance throughout the acquisition phase, it is important for the development of the schemata, which is responsible for the assembly and improved retention and transfer of motor learning.
In a review of literature,[3] the authors identify that there were few patterns to explain the improvements in experiments that use the contextual interference paradigm.
Although there were no patterns in the literature, common areas and limitations that justified interference effects were identified:[3] Feedback is regarded as a critical variable for skill acquisition and is broadly defined as any kind of sensory information related to a response or movement.
Several studies have manipulated the presentation features of feedback information (e.g., frequency, delay, interpolated activities, and precision) in order to determine the optimal conditions for learning.
Knowledge of results (KR) is defined as extrinsic or augmented information provided to a performer after a response, indicating the success of their actions with regard to an environmental goal.
As a result, removing or adding a significant source of information after a practice period where it was present or not, does not cause performance to deteriorate.
As a result of the universal need for properly calibrated movement, it is not surprising that the cerebellum and basal ganglia are widely conserved across vertebrates from fish to humans.
[15] Through motor learning the human is capable of achieving very skilled behavior, and through repetitive training a degree of automaticity can be expected.
Research on Aplysia californica, the sea slug, has yielded detailed knowledge of the cellular mechanisms of a simple form of learning.
For example, Mikhail Lebedev, Miguel Nicolelis and their colleagues recently demonstrated cortical plasticity that resulted in incorporation of an external actuator controlled through a brain–machine interface into the subject's neural representation.
[20] Motor learning has been applied to stroke recovery and neurorehabilitation, as rehabilitation is generally a process of relearning lost skills through practice and/or training.
It has been shown that over learning leads to major improvements in long term retention and little effect on performance.
[21] It is suggested that compensation methods develop through pure repetition and to elicit cortical changes (true recovery), individuals should be exposed to more challenging tasks.
A recent study ischemic conditioning was delivered via blood pressure cuff inflation and deflation to the arm, to facilitate learning.
The potential benefits of ischemic conditioning extend far beyond stroke to other neuro-, geriatric, and pediatric rehabilitation populations.