title: A memory of errors in sensorimotor learning.
abstract: The current view of motor learning suggests that when we revisit a task, the brain recalls the motor commands it previously learned. In this view, motor memory is a memory of motor commands, acquired through trial-and-error and reinforcement. Here we show that the brain controls how much it is willing to learn from the current error through a principled mechanism that depends on the history of past errors. This suggests that the brain stores a previously unknown form of memory, a memory of errors. A mathematical formulation of this idea provides insights into a host of puzzling experimental data, including savings and meta-learning, demonstrating that when we are better at a motor task, it is partly because the brain recognizes the errors it experienced before.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Laboratory for Computational Motor Control, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA. dherzfe1@jhmi.edu.
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Herzfeld
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, Laboratory for Computational Motor Control, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
authors.forename: Pavan A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Vaswani
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Laboratory for Computational Motor Control, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
authors.forename: Mollie K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Marko
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Laboratory for Computational Motor Control, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
authors.forename: Reza
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Shadmehr
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D055815:Young Adult