Muscle memory

When a movement is repeated over time, the brain creates a long-term muscle memory for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed with little to no conscious effort.

Muscle memory is found in many everyday activities that become automatic and improve with practice, such as riding bikes, driving motor vehicles, playing ball sports, typing on keyboards, entering PINs, playing musical instruments,[1] poker,[2] martial arts, swimming,[3] dancing, and drawing.

After the break from tradition of the pre-1900s view of introspection, psychologists emphasized research and more scientific methods in observing behaviours.

[7] Movements such as facial expressions, which are thought to be learned, can actually be observed in children who are blind; thus there is some evidence for motor memory being genetically pre-wired.

The prefrontal and frontal cortices are also active during this stage due to the need for increased attention on the task being learned.

[13] The basal ganglia also play an important role in memory and learning, in particular in reference to stimulus-response associations and the formation of habits.

[14] Muscle memory consolidation involves the continuous evolution of neural processes after practicing a task has stopped.

Previously untrained muscles will acquire newly formed nuclei through the fusion of satellite cells preceding hypertrophy.

However, within the motor cortex, endurance induces angiogenesis within as little as three weeks to increase blood flow to the involved regions.

[15] In addition, neurotropic factors within the motor cortex are upregulated in response to endurance training to promote neural survival.

[15] Strength training results are seen in the spinal cord well before any physiological muscular adaptation is established through muscle hypertrophy or atrophy.

The researchers went on to examine the human epigenome in order to understand how DNA methylation may aid in creating this effect.

The authors went on to identify how these changes altered the expression of relevant transcripts, and subsequently correlated these changes with adaptations in skeletal muscle mass.

Fine motor skills are often discussed in terms of transitive movements, which are those done when using tools (which could be as simple as a tooth brush or pencil).

It was found that muscle memory is relied on when playing the clarinet, specifically to help create special effects through certain tongue movements when blowing air into the instrument.

[26] Certain human behaviours, especially actions like the finger movements in musical performances, are very complex and require many interconnected neural networks where information can be transmitted across multiple brain regions.

Overall, long-term musical fine motor training allows for complex actions to be performed at a lower level of movement control, monitoring, selection, attention, and timing.

[28] This leaves room for musicians to focus attention synchronously elsewhere, such as on the artistic aspect of the performance, without having to consciously control one's fine motor actions.

[29][30] Solving these puzzles in an optimally efficient manner requires the cube to be manipulated according to a set of complex algorithms.

[34] The way in which a child learns a gross motor skill can affect how long it takes to consolidate it and be able to reproduce the movement.

[36] It was found that the Alzheimer's patients performed better on the task when learning occurred under constant training as opposed to variable.

Also, it was found that gross motor memory in Alzheimer's patients was the same as that of healthy adults when learning occurs under constant practice.

As Edward S. Casey notes in Remembering, Second Edition: A Phenomenological Study, declarative memory, a process that involves an initial fragile learning period.

[1] An example of stable motor memory consolidation in a patient with brain damage is the case of Clive Wearing.

Case study: 54-year-old man with known history of epilepsy This patient was diagnosed with a pure form of dysgraphia of letters, meaning he had no other speech or reading impairments.

[37] He had previously been rated average on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale's vocabulary subtest for writing ability comparative to his age before his diagnosis.

[37] Somehow there is a distinct process within the brain related to writing letters, which is dissociated from copying and drawing letter-like items.