Golfers wonder why they cannot get that perfect swing and keep it. Brain inconsistency is common according to a
Check out Dr. Krishna Shenoy’s research in the Dec 21 issue of Neuron to see why this is so. It’s cool to see the neural basis for movement. For instance, they discovered that the brain has to start from scratch every time you plan a 
movement…. Yikes – that explain a few golf shots I’ve blown to the wind lately.
So how does practice help?
Certain repeated practices help train your mind and improve certain actions – no question … they tell us. They also concluded from this study that humans are not wired for repetition or consistency like computers or machines.
So what’s new here?
We used to think movement linked into mechanical parts of the brain … and these can be learned in that manner. This new research showed that less than half of movement inconsistency is the fault of muscles. Research suggests the brain evolved a unique style of movement control … because most moves needed are custom related. Take golf, for instance. You’ll rarely swing under the exact same conditions, in the exact same way – to get the results you want.
What I find interesting about this research, is news that the brain is not wired to do the same things in the same way. Maybe that why we like to tackle a few new adventures we’d never done before.
As for that golf swing…. Hand me a robot arm and a Callaway driver – and my brain’ll take its chances…. How about you?
Certain learning process has compelled the students to repeat a word or an sentence to retain them in memory. Specially in our country English is our second language. It reminds me in my high school days most of the Chinese Characters are retained in my mind by force memory. The truth is I never learned the language. My friend is now a teacher in Mandarin Language. If I had really made the effort to learn Mandarin I can be a teacher as well.
Posted by: Lucy Chan | March 30, 2007 1:00 AM | Permalink to Comment