The Effect of Circadian Rhythms and Variability of Physical Practice on the Enhancement based Consolidation Process in Explicit Motor Memory

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of circadian rhythms and variability of physical practice on the enhancement-based consolidation process in explicit motor memory. 40 right-handed female students of Alzahra University of physical education participated in this research. Participants were divided according to their circadian rhythm into 4 different groups. The acquisition phase consisted of nine blocks of 10 trials which constant groups from 6.2 m and random groups from 3.2, 2.6, 2.3 to practiced their darts skills. Retention test was performed by Record score of 30 trials (three blocks of 10 trials) throwing darts from a distance of 6.2 m in three phases (immediate retention, delayed retention morning, delayed retention time). For data analysis, analysis of variance with repeated measures and Bonferroni post hoc test at a significance level (0.05) was used. The results show that the best performance of the constant morning group was in the delayed retention morning and constant evening group were in the delayed retention evening. In general, we can conclude that most enhancement-based consolidation process occurs with 24h off line periods in constants groups and night's sleep in these off-line periods facilitated consolidation of motor memory. So, 24h offline period is the best offline period for enhancing explicit motor memory.