TY - JOUR T1 - Off-Line Learning and the Primary Motor Cortex JF - The Journal of Neuroscience JO - J. Neurosci. SP - 6372 LP - 6378 DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1851-05.2005 VL - 25 IS - 27 AU - Edwin M. Robertson AU - Daniel Z. Press AU - Alvaro Pascual-Leone Y1 - 2005/07/06 UR - http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/27/6372.abstract N2 - We are all familiar with acquiring skills during practice, but skill can also continue to develop between practice sessions. These “off-line” improvements are frequently supported by sleep, but they can be time dependent when a skill is acquired unintentionally. The magnitude of these over-day and overnight improvements is similar, suggesting that a similar mechanism may support both types of off-line improvements. However, here we show that disruption of the primary motor cortex with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation blocks off-line improvements over the day but not overnight. This suggests that a memory may be rescued overnight and subsequently enhanced or that different aspects of a skill, with differential dependencies on the primary motor cortex, are enhanced over day and overnight. Off-line improvements of similar magnitude are not supported by similar mechanisms; instead, the mechanisms engaged may depend on brain state. ER -