The effect of different offline periods on enhancement-based consolidation process in implicit motor memory

The extensive studies examined necessary offline periods for happening consolidation enhancement in implicit and explicit memory in humans and obtained conflict findings. This study was aimed was to compare the effect of different offline periods on enhancement-based consolidation process in implicit motor memory. In this semi- experimental research, 60 health female students in the range of 20-30 years old were selected in convenience way and randomly divided into three groups with distance of 6, 24 and 72 hours in offline periods. This research consisted of two phases of learning and retention and serial reaction time task was used for this research. Data were analyzed using ANOVA with repeated measure and Bonferroni Post Hoc tests. Results showed that in skill learning stage, group main effect and interaction effect between groups were not significant (P>0.05), but epoch main effect was significant (P<0.05), and practice led to decrease the reaction time in fifth epoch compared to other epochs. In retention stage, the epoch main effect and its interactive effect between group and epoch were significant (P<0.05). Furthermore, results showed that three groups in retention test epoch have better performance rather than epoch 5 in learning stage. Bonferroni Post Hoc tests showed that practice in group with 24h offline period appeared the better performance in reaction time rather than two other groups (P<0.05). The search results indicated that make offline period after learning phase could be facilitated the implicit motor memory consolidation.