PSY 478 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Skill, Motor Program, Brainstem

• School: University of Arizona
• Department: Psychology Main
• Course: PSY 478
• Professor: Fabian Fernandez, PhD

Document Summary

Sleep and procedural skills: sleep and motor skills, qualities of skill memories, skill an enduring ability (often physical) that develops with practice over time, skill memories cannot always be verbalized unconsciously acquired and retrieved. What kind of skills are there: perceptual-motor skills, perceptual-motor skills learned movement patterns guided by sensory inputs. The skill becomes underpinned by a motor program, which is an internal representation of the skill like a computer program with instructions on how to guide movement. This is accompanied by loss of the ability to verbalize the process. Brain regions involved with skill learning: cerebral (motor) cortex: the place where a perceptual-motor skillset is made and stored. The area expands with training: basal ganglia: at the base of the forebrain. Sends information about motor programs from cortex to the spinal cord/muscles. Involved in activation and control of voluntary movement (velocity, direction, and amplitude): cerebellum: (cid:862)little (cid:271)rai(cid:374)(cid:863) atta(cid:272)hed to the rear of the (cid:271)rai(cid:374)ste(cid:373).