The purpose of this study is to better understand how practicing a new skill builds a stable memory and how this memory is maintained over time as one gets older. A better understanding how memories are controlled in healthy aging may help to develop better treatments for memory problems.
The study's main question is how the different brain regions communicate with each other when one is retrieving memories of a well-practiced skill. Specifically, when and where the brain waves that are related to skill memory are produced. The brief changes in the brain will be recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a medical technology that looks at blood flow in the brain. To assess electrical changes in the brain, the brain waves, electroencephalography (EEG) will be used. Combining EEG and fMRI will allow the precise detection of the exact location where the brain is active at any moment in time.
This study is conducted at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). The study will take about one to two weeks and involves two visits to MUSC including an interview and combined brain recording and brain scan during task practice (EEG-fMRI) and up to 7 days of online skill practice at home. Volunteers in this research study must be free of any brain disease or brain injuries and have to be in good health status. Approximately 40 volunteers will take part in this study.

Sometimes, it is necessary to re-learn a previously learned movement behavior, for example, a bad posture during the golf drive or while playing the piano. Unlearning or relearning an intensively trained behavior is particularly important if the behavior is hampering recovery, for example, in chronic pain or after a stroke. With this study, we experimentally test the brain mechanisms that control the change of pre-existing stable memories of a motor skill with electroencephalography (EEG). We will then use non-invasive brain stimulation to modulate these brain mechanisms and test if it is possible to change the pre-existing motor memory and the learning of a new motor skill.

VERIFY will validate biomarkers of upper extremity (UE) motor outcome in the acute ischemic stroke window for immediate use in clinical trials, and explore these biomarkers in acute intracerebral hemorrhage. The central hypothesis is that patients have different UE outcomes depending on corticomotor system (CMS) function, measured as motor evoked potential (MEP) status with TMS, and on CMS structure, measured as acute lesion load with MRI. VERIFY will create the first multicenter, large-scale, prospective dataset of clinical, TMS, and MRI measures in the acute stroke time window.