Article

Sleep has been demonstrated to enhance simple motor skill learning
"offline" in young adults. "Offline learning" refers to either the stabilization
or the enhancement of a memory through the passage of time without additional
practice. It remains unclear whether a functional motor task will benefit from
sleep to produce offline motor skill enhancement. Physical therapists often teach
clients functional motor skills; therefore, it is important to understand how
sleep affects learning of these skills. The purpose of this study was
to determine whether sleep enhances the learning of a functional motor task.
DESIGN: A prospective, cross-sectional, repeated-measures design was used.
METHODS: Young participants who were healthy (N=24) were randomly assigned to
either a sleep group or a no-sleep group. The sleep group practiced a novel
walking task in the evening and underwent retention testing the following
morning, and the no-sleep group practiced the task in the morning and underwent
retention testing in the evening. Outcome measures included time around the
walking path and spatiotemporal gait parameters. RESULTS: Only participants who
slept after practicing the novel walking task demonstrated a significant offline
improvement in performance. Compared with the no-sleep group, participants in the
sleep group demonstrated a significant decrease in the time around the walking
path, an increase in tandem velocity, an increase in tandem step length, and a
decline in tandem step time. LIMITATIONS: Time-of-day effect and inability to
ensure a certain amount of sleep quantity and quality of participants were
limitations of the study. CONCLUSIONS: This study is the first to provide
evidence that sleep facilitates learning clinically relevant functional motor
tasks. Sleep is an important factor that physical therapists should consider when
teaching clients motor skills.

Langue : ANGLAIS