ArticleeLife2020
A critical re-evaluation of fMRI signatures of motor sequence learning.
Article in eLife, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Consistent cortico-basal ganglia-cerebellar activation in early motor sequence learning: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Translational psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Trial
- Suppression of Motor Sequence Learning and Execution Through Anodal Cerebellar Transcranial Electrical Stimulation.Cerebellum (London, England) · 2023Trial
- Recognition capability of one's own skilled movement is dissociated from acquisition of motor skill memory.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- Decreased thalamo-cortico connectivity during an implicit sequence motor learning task and 7 days escitalopram intake.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- A large-scale heterogeneous 3D magnetic resonance brain imaging dataset for self-supervised learning.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Complementary roles of cell-type-specific plasticity in shaping neocortical dynamics for learning action timing.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Learning-related population dynamics in right and left dorsal premotor cortex during typing skill acquisition.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Neural Correlates of Motor Sequence Learning and Enhanced Offline Consolidation in 7-11-Year-Old Children.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Motor automaticity in natural keyboard typing.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Distinct Physiological Mechanisms Drive Grey Matter Plasticity in Complex Versus Simple Sequence Learning.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Association between Tinnitus and Auditory Middle Latency Response: An Exploratory Study.Journal of otology · 2026Article
- Brain activation for actual and imagined hand movement following bilateral hand transplantation.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2025Article
- Motor Sequence Learning Involves Better Prediction of the Next Action and Optimization of Movement Trajectories.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- The human medial temporal lobe represents memory items in their ordinal position in both declarative and motor memory domains.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Continuous Diffusion-Detected Neuroplasticity during Motor Learning.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Distinct neurochemical predictors for different phases of decision-making learning.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- Dissociable Causal Roles of Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex and Primary Motor Cortex over the Course of Motor Skill Development.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Common brain representations of action and perception investigated with cross-modal classification of newly learned melodies.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Unraveling the neurophysiological correlates of phase-specific enhancement of motor memory consolidation via slow-wave closed-loop targeted memory reactivation.Nature communications · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Despite numerous studies, there is little agreement about what brain changes accompany motor sequence learning, partly because of a general publication bias that favors novel results. We therefore decided to systematically reinvestigate proposed functional magnetic resonance imaging correlates of motor learning in a preregistered longitudinal study with four scanning sessions over 5 weeks of training. Activation decreased more for trained than untrained sequences in premotor and parietal areas, without any evidence of learning-related activation increases. Premotor and parietal regions also exhibited changes in the fine-grained, sequence-specific activation patterns early in learning, which stabilized later. No changes were observed in the primary motor cortex (M1). Overall, our study provides evidence that human motor sequence learning occurs outside of M1. Furthermore, it shows that we cannot expect to find activity increases as an indicator for learning, making subtle changes in activity patterns across weeks the most promising fMRI correlate of training-induced plasticity.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.