Ipsilateral transfer of motor skill from lower to upper limb in healthy adults: A randomized controlled trial.

Background And Purpose: Whereas motor skills of the untrained upper limb (UL) can improve following practice with the other UL, it has yet to be determined if an UL motor skill can improve following practice of that skill with the lower limb (LL).

Methods: Forty-five healthy subjects randomly participated in a 10-minute single-session intervention of (1) practicing 50 reaching movement (RM) sequences with the non-dominant left LL toward light switches (LL group); or (2) observing the identical 50 light switches sequences (Switches Observation (SO) group); or (3) observing nature films (Nature Observation (NO) group). RM sequence performance with the left UL toward the light switches was tested before and immediately after the intervention and retested after 24 h.

Balance maintenance as an acquired motor skill: Delayed gains and robust retention after a single session of training in a virtual environment.

Does the learning of a balance and stability skill exhibit time-course phases and transfer limitations characteristic of the acquisition and consolidation of voluntary movement sequences? Here we followed the performance of young adults trained in maintaining balance while standing on a moving platform synchronized with a virtual reality road travel scene. The training protocol included eight 3 min long iterations of the road scene. Center of Pressure (CoP) displacements were analyzed for each task iteration within the training session, as well as during tests at 24h, 4 weeks and 12 weeks post-training to test for consolidation phase ("offline") gains and assess retention.