The effects of concurrent timed-interval finger tapping on trace eyeblink conditioning in college students

Abstract

The brain is composed of multiple systems that interact during cognition and behavior. Concurrently performing two or more tasks that compete for processing from a common system resource typically results in decremented performance, referred to as interference, for one or more of the tasks as compared to single-task performance. This interference is a hallmark of the dual-task experimental design. The purpose of this experiment is to investigate the involvement of cerebellar cortex in trace eyeblink conditioning by utilizing the traditional dual-task design. Timed-interval finger tapping, a motor function mediated by the cerebellar cortex, and several different cognitive tasks representing dissociable distributed brain memory systems were co-administered with trace eyeblink conditioning. If cerebellar cortex is involved in trace eyeblink conditioning, then timed-interval finger tapping should significantly interfere with acquisition rate for conditioned responding. Performance variables from trace eyeblink conditioning were analyzed to investigate interference effects of timed-interval finger tapping and the various cognitive tasks. Results from a series of mixed model repeated measures ANOVAs indicate that the acquisition rate and magnitude of trace conditioning was not significantly reduced in the timed-interval tapping group compared to the control group, although participants did demonstrate evidence of inferior learning. This finding suggests that cerebellar cortex is not critically involved during acquisition of trace conditioning, however it is to be interpreted with caution as methodological and theoretical confounds may preclude a straightforward conclusion.