When you learn a new skill, like playing the piano or mastering a golf swing, you might have heard that “practice makes perfect.” But according to a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the timing of your sleep could be just as important as the practice itself. Researchers found that motor memories—our brain’s way of holding on to skills and actions—are not just consolidated over time, but they can be significantly enhanced when sleep closely follows practice.
The research team set out to explore a longstanding debate in neuroscience: Does sleep play a role in consolidating motor memories, or is this process solely a function of time? While sleep has long been known to improve declarative memory—the type that helps us recall facts and events—its role in motor memory, such as learning new physical skills, has been less clear.
Previous studies suggested that motor memories, particularly those involved in adapting to new sensorimotor conditions, consolidate with time, independent of sleep. However, these studies did not consider the timing between training and sleep, which could be a critical factor.
In this study, the researchers proposed that motor memories might indeed benefit from sleep, but only when sleep occurs shortly after practice while the memory is still fresh and fragile. This hypothesis, if confirmed, would indicate that there are common mechanisms in how different types of memories are consolidated, whether they involve learning facts or mastering new skills.
“While it is well-established that sleep enhances conscious memories of facts and events, its role in consolidating memories of motor skills such as riding a bike remains a matter of debate,” said study author Valeria Della-Maggiore, the director of the Physiology of Action Lab at the University of Buenos Aires, professor at the University of San Martin, and adjunct professor at McGill University.
“However, most studies challenging the role of sleep in motor learning have largely overlooked the significance of the time interval elapsed between training and sleep as a relevant factor. In our study, we aimed to investigate the proximity between training and bedtime as a main modulator given the potential impact of sleep in optimizing training and rehabilitation protocols.”
To test their hypothesis, the researchers conducted a series of experiments involving 290 participants, all right-handed, with no history of neurological or psychiatric disorders. The participants, ranging in age from about 20 to 28 years, were recruited from the School of Medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. Before and during the study, they maintained regular sleep schedules, which were monitored through self-reported logs.
The study used a visuomotor adaptation task, a well-established method for examining sensorimotor adaptation. Participants had to move a cursor on a computer screen to hit targets using a joystick. The trick was that sometimes the cursor’s movement was altered by an optical rotation, forcing participants to adapt their hand movements to hit the target accurately. This task allowed researchers to measure how well participants retained the ability to adapt to these changes—a measure of motor memory.
In the first experiment, 111 participants were split into five groups, each tested at different intervals after training, ranging from 15 minutes to nine hours. These intervals did not control when participants went to sleep, mimicking everyday situations where people train at different times of the day. Another group of participants trained and then slept before being tested 24 hours later.
In the second experiment, the researchers sought to find the most vulnerable period for memory consolidation by introducing an interference — another learning task — to see how quickly the motor memory from the first task would decay. A sample of 92 participants adapted to two opposite optical rotations separated by different intervals, from five minutes to 24 hours, with memory retention tested the next day.
In the final experiment, the researchers directly tested the hypothesis that sleep benefits sensorimotor adaptation memory only when it occurs soon after learning, within the identified critical window. A sample of 74 participants were divided into two main groups: one group trained on the task late at night and went to sleep shortly afterward, while the other group trained in the morning and did not sleep until much later. Both groups were tested 24 hours after their initial training.
To control for potential circadian effects, the researchers also included two additional control groups: one trained in the evening and tested in the morning after a full night’s sleep, and the other trained in the morning and tested in the evening without an intermediate sleep period.
In the first experiment, where the timing between training and sleep was not controlled, there was no significant difference in memory retention between participants who slept and those who did not. This finding aligned with previous studies suggesting that motor memory consolidation does not rely on sleep when training is spread out over the day.
However, the second experiment revealed that motor memories were most fragile — hence, most in need of consolidation — within the first hour after training. During this time, introducing a second task significantly hindered the retention of the first task. This discovery highlighted a critical window during which the brain is most susceptible to interference.
The third experiment provided the most compelling evidence. When participants trained just before going to sleep, their memory retention was significantly better — by about 30% — than when they trained and stayed awake for several hours before sleeping. The improvement was tied to specific changes in brain activity during sleep, including increased density of sleep spindles (brief bursts of brain activity during non-rapid eye movement sleep) and their coupling with slow oscillations. These changes were particularly pronounced over the brain hemisphere opposite to the hand used in the task, suggesting that sleep actively consolidates motor memory by fine-tuning neural connections.
“We were surprised by the consistent memory enhancement of approximately 30% observed across independently trained groups,” Della-Maggiore told PsyPost. “We were pleased to replicate previous findings from our lab showing that sleep specifically modulates neural markers of memory consolidation over the brain hemisphere contralateral (opposite) to the trained hand.”
The implications of this study are far-reaching. If the timing of sleep can significantly enhance motor memory, this could change how we approach skill training and rehabilitation. Athletes might benefit from napping shortly after practice, and rehabilitation programs could be optimized by aligning therapy sessions with patients’ sleep schedules.
“Timing skill practice around your sleep schedule may significantly enhance your ability to retain and perform that skill,” Della-Maggiore said. “This simple adjustment could effectively boost motor learning and recovery in sports and rehabilitation settings.”
While these findings are promising, the study has limitations that future research should address. First, the motor learning tasks were highly controlled and may not fully represent more complex, real-life activities. Whether the same sleep-related benefits would apply to skills like playing a musical instrument or sports remains to be seen. Additionally, while the study controlled for sleep quality, it did not explore whether shorter naps could have a similar effect as a full night of sleep.
“We are now designing a study to determine whether our work applies to real-life activities, which will be crucial to assessing its translational impact,” Della-Maggiore said. “Our long-term goal is to determine whether the beneficial effects of sleep extend to real-life motor tasks, such as sports and the use of complex tools, and to explore its effectiveness in patients with motor injuries. We also aim to assess whether a short nap can be as beneficial as a full night of sleep. In parallel, we are developing sleep monitoring and wearable devices to enable personalized, data-driven neuro-interventions in home settings, beyond the clinical environment.”
The study, “Sleep consolidation potentiates sensorimotor adaptation,” was authored by Agustin Solano, Gonzalo Lerner, Guillermina Griffa, Alvaro Deleglise, Pedro Caffaro, Luis Riquelme, Daniel Perez-Chada, and Valeria Della-Maggiore
