Linking Motor Working Memory to Explicit and Implicit Motor Learning

While explicit and implicit motor learning have been widely studied, the extent to which working memory for recent movements – motor working memory (MWM) – contributes to these processes remains unclear. Previous research suggests that visuospatial working memory may facilitate explicit motor learning but is either uninvolved in or detrimental to implicit learning. Here, we ask if and how these findings extend to non-visual MWM. Based on recent work pointing to separate effector-independent and effector-specific MWM codes, we hypothesized that: (1) explicit motor learning processes would correlate with effector-independent MWM, and (2) implicit motor learning processes would correlate with effector-specific MWM. To test these hypotheses, human participants completed both a MWM task and a visuomotor adaptation task. Our results revealed significant correlations between the quality of effector-independent MWM and the degree of explicit motor learning, extending previous findings on visuospatial working memory. Additionally, we present evidence supporting our second hypothesis, that effector-specific MWM correlates with implicit motor learning.