We use our locomotor learning to teach ourselves how to run, get a drink, and walk so we can get around the world. But old age or illness can impair our ability to develop motor skills. Scientists examining the effects of supplemental oxygen on motor learning have discovered a potentially effective method to help people with nerve injuries regain their former abilities. Dr Marc Dalecki, now at the German University of Health and Sport in Berlin, lead author of the study, said: «A simple and easy treatment with 100% oxygen can improve significant human motor learning process. .
Our brains need a lot of oxygen. In low oxygen contexts, cognitive function is reduced, while in high oxygen contexts it recovers and delivery of 100% oxygen has been used to help preserve as much brain as possible in patients with cerebral palsy. nerve damage. Motor learning is particularly dependent on oxygen-dependent memory and information processing functions: humans learn by trial and error, so the ability to remember and integrate information from previous experiments is is very important for effective and efficient motor learning. So, could supplementing oxygen while learning a motor task help people learn faster and more efficiently, offering hope to patients with neurological rehabilitation? «I’ve had this idea for almost a decade and promised myself I’ll investigate it when I have a research lab,» said Dalecki, head of experimental research at Louisiana State University’s School of Kinesiology. own. “And with Zheng Wang, now Dr. Zheng Wang, I have the perfect PhD student to run it – a keen physiotherapist with a clinical background and experience in treating patients. stroke.»
Hand-eye coordination: Dalecki and Wang recruited 40 participants, 20 of whom received 100% oxygen at normal pressure and 20 of whom received medical air (21% oxygen) through nasal cannula during the ‘adaptation’ or learning phase of a task. Dalecki and Wang chose a simple visual motor task that involved drawing lines between different targets on a digital tablet with a stylus: the task was designed to test whether participants How quickly experts can integrate information from the eyes and hands, an important part of motor learning. . After the task was learned, the pointer and stylus alignment was changed to see how effectively the participants accommodated the inconsistencies and then re-aligned for the final session to see how they adapt to the rearrangement. “The oxygen treatment resulted in significantly faster learning and about 30 percent better performance on a motor adaptation task,” said Wang, first author of the study and now at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. typical vision. “We also demonstrated that participants were able to consolidate these improvements after oxygen treatment was discontinued.”
Oxygen improves learning by 30%: Scientists found that participants who received oxygen learned faster and performed better, improvements that extended to later parts of the task when no oxygen was used. . The oxygen group moves the pens more smoothly and accurately, and when the pointers are adjusted to intentionally throw them away, they adapt more quickly. They also made larger mistakes when aligning the corrected stylus, showing that they integrated the previous alignment more thoroughly than the rest of the group. Dalecki and Wang plan to investigate the long-term effects of this supplement on learning and examine interference with other motor learning tasks: it is possible that the brain functions involved for this task are specific. particularly benefit from high ambient oxygen levels, leading to the observed results. advantage in performance. They also hope to bring oxygen therapy to the elderly and injured, in the hope that it will help them relearn motor skills.
«Our future plan is to investigate whether this treatment can also improve motor recovery after brain injury,» Dalecki said. «Since it works in healthy young brains, we expect that the effects may be even greater in neuro-impaired, more vulnerable brains.» (ANI)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is automatically generated from an aggregate feed.)
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