Sleep Enhances Motor Memory Consolidation in Piano Practice and Beyond | January 25 2025, 18:10

I have long noticed an interesting feature. You practice a piece on the piano and when progress seems to stall, you quit, but the next day when you sit down at the keyboard, suddenly, the difference from yesterday is like night and day, even though all you did was sleep.

I found a study (Journal of Neuroscience) suggesting that the proximity of sleep to practice plays a significant role. The researchers hypothesized that motor memories – the brain’s way of preserving skills and actions – not only consolidate over time, but can significantly improve if sleep follows soon after practice.

This hypothesis was tested through a series of experiments involving 290 right-handed individuals. Participants had to move a cursor on a computer screen to hit targets using a joystick. The complexity arose because sometimes the movement of the cursor was altered by optical rotation, which forced participants to adjust their hand movements to accurately hit the target. Different groups of subjects underwent this at different times, and those who did it before sleep showed the best progress.

It turns out that engaging in activities involving a significant portion of motor memories—like playing the piano or participating in complex-coordinated sports—right before sleep is beneficial. You could either adjust your sleep or the timing of these activities.