Potentiation of Procedural Motor Learning in Health and Disease

Summary

The investigators plan to improve the learning of motor skills by pharmacological means (dopamine), and by noninvasive brain stimulation. They will study both healthy subjects and chronic stroke patients. In addition, they want to study the mechanisms of enhanced learning, on the molecular and the systems level.

Timeline

Start

2005-07

Primary completion

2007-12

Completion

2013-01

Outcome

Met primary endpoint

Stopped (Enrollment): “no further funding available for recruiting and testing participants”

paper Levodopa significantly improved our primary outcome measure, procedural motor learning, compared with placebo (P<.05). PMID 18760148 ↗

Publications

• Background Floel A, Breitenstein C, Hummel F, Celnik P, Gingert C, Sawaki L, Knecht S, Cohen LG. Dopaminergic influences on formation of a motor memory. Ann Neurol. 2005 Jul;58(1):121-30. doi: 10.1002/ana.20536.
• Results Rosser N, Heuschmann P, Wersching H, Breitenstein C, Knecht S, Floel A. Levodopa improves procedural motor learning in chronic stroke patients. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2008 Sep;89(9):1633-41. doi: 10.1016/j.apmr.2008.02.030.

Drugs

Evaluation	Drug	Modality	Dose	Route
Subject	Levodopa	Unknown	100 mg	—

Indications