NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget, but how does the brain learn in the first place? New research suggests that a part of the brain known to be involved in controlling movement also plays a role in learning new motor skills.

``Motor learning is a very important process, of course,'' Dr. Mark Hallett of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, told Reuters Health. However, he said that much less is known about this process than about ``explicit learning,'' such as learning information.

It has been known that the brain consolidates, or processes, the information it learns explicitly. Recently, motor learning has been shown to undergo the same sort of consolidation, according to Hallett.

``But the anatomical structures underlying this process are not clear,'' he said.

Now Hallett and his colleagues report that the motor cortex, a part of the brain involved in controlling movement, is essential for the early consolidation of motor learning. The findings are published in the advance online edition of the journal Nature.

In the study, the investigators applied low-frequency magnetic stimulation to various brain regions while people practiced fast finger movements. The stimulation kept participants from improving on the finger exercises only when it was applied to the motor cortex.

``Our work shows that the motor cortex is involved in this process,'' Hallett said.

``We now know that the motor cortex is not just a simple executor of movement but has more complex functions,'' he added.

But the motor cortex is not likely to be the only brain region involved in the consolidation of motor learning, Hallett pointed out.

``We have much more to learn about all the parts of the brain involved in the many aspects of motor learning,'' he said.

SOURCE: Nature 2002;415:10.1038/nature712.

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