Sleep 'n' cycle - Sleep and gross-motor learning in school aged children and adults

To investigate our hypotheses concerning sleep and gross-motor learning a suitable study environment and device that allows us to exactly assess gross-motor performance will be developed in collaboration with the Department of Sports and Kinesiology. 40 healthy male subjects aged between 20 and 30 years will be tested by a combined between- and within-subjects design either in a sleep or in a wake condition after learning to ride the inverse steering bicycle, requesting major adaptation of the whole body motoric system. Additionally, a school aged children population (9-10 years; N=40) will participate in our study to evaluate age-related mechanisms of sleep and gross-motor learning. Gross-motor performance will be quantified by a specially designed bicycle that allows to precisely assess bicycling trajectories and riding behaviour. By sophisticated quantitative EEG analyses techniques (e.g., event-/task-related synchronization, phase coherence, Gabor wavelet based power-frequency analyses) we will be able to identify neurocognitive key mechanisms during learning, consolidation and subsequent gross-motor retrieval. The main objective of the present proposal is to focus on three research questions: (1) Is there a functional role of sleep in the consolidation of real-life gross-motor skills? (2) Are there specific developmental differences with regards to sleep-dependent gross-motor consolidation, and are different sleep mechanisms guiding the integration of new gross-motor memories depending on age? (3) Is there a direct relationship of brain activity recorded during gross-motor learning/retrieval, subsequent sleep and gross-motor performance changes? To address these questions we plan to test 40 healthy male subjects (20-30yr) using a combined between- and within-subjects. Participants will be either investigated in a ’SLEEP’ or in a ’WAKE’ condition after 2h riding an inverse (‘TRAINING INVERSE’) vs. a normal steering bicycle (‘TRAINING NORMAL’). Additionally a school aged children population (9-10yr; N=40) will participate in all conditions to reveal possible age-related effects in the still developing brain.