Beta power modulation supports micro-consolidation of implicit motor sequences

The consolidation of novel motor skills has traditionally been investigated over the timescale of hours-days following practice. However, a growing body of evidence has demonstrated that consolidation of skills occurs more rapidly across a scale of seconds – a process termed ‘micro-consolidation’. Micro-consolidation of explicitly cued motor sequences is supported by frontoparietal beta oscillations. Whether beta power modulation is a common mechanism supporting rapid consolidation of other forms of skill learning, such as implicit sequence learning, is yet to be elucidated. 72 healthy adults aged 18-35 (55% female) completed a serial reaction time task with concurrent electroencephalography recording. In line with our previous work, we show that the early ‘fast’ learning on an implicit sequence task is primarily expressed as micro-offline gains during brief rest periods between periods of practice. Beta power was modulated as a function of active practice vs rest epochs (i.e., event-related synchronisation/desynchronisation), and here we demonstrate that micro-offline gains are associated with this modulation of beta power during the rest epochs. This relationship was specific to the beta frequency, and was not observed across either mu or gamma bands. Overall, in line with seminal work implicating beta in early explicit motor learning, our results indicate that beta is a shared neurophysiological signature of micro-consolidation of implicit sequences.