The Effect of Voluntary & Forced Exercises and Different Off-line Periods on Implicit Motor Memory Consolidation

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of voluntary and forced exercise and off-line periods on consolidation of implicit motor memory. This study was a quasi-experimental method and the statistical population consisted of girl students of Shiraz University. So 30 non-athlete girl students with mental health, and without neural disease background or sleep disorders were voluntarily participated in the study. After determining the memory function, they were divided into 3 experimental groups with 6, 24 and 48 hours off-line periods. The research consisted of 2 stages and each stage included of acquisition, physical exercises (first stage voluntary and the second one forced) and retention (memory test) sessions. The intermittent chain reaction time assignment was used to measure motor memory changes. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with repeated measure, with the significant level of p≤0.05, was used to answer the questions of research. The results showed that each of the 3 off-line periods had positive effects on consolidation of implicit motor memory, but there were no significant difference among them. The effect of voluntary and forced exercise on implicit motor memory consolidation, showed a significant difference in favor of voluntary exercise.