Eli5 – How does muscle memory work ?
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Muscle memory is a misnomer. As you practice things, anything at all, the neural connections related to that thing are reenforced. So if you ride a bike, you become practiced at it and you don’t really forget how. We call that muscle memory, but it’s not. It’s just those nerves that control those muscles got used and became stronger and better at what they do.
The ELI5 version is that by doing something with some repetition you create something like train tracks that you will be able to go back and use later on even if you haven’t done that activity for some time. Essentially, those tracks are laid through your brain and sometimes the muscles themselves. Very rarely do we lose something if we have done it often, but sometimes it does require a bit of dusting off to “click.”
A little more technically, your brain will create and strengthen neural pathways (think of them like specific blueprints for how to do something), as well as even injecting your muscles with nuclei as is the case for exercising where your body at the local level will create actual and relatively long-lasting changes—or “memories.”
Dumbed down for Everybody:
You do thing like ride bike, brain take that memory and tells the muscles to “hey if we decide to do it again can you make us remember how to do it” “k boss”
Then next time you do it the muscles are like: “boss, this is bike, you use legs and stuff(I’m not good at biking)” “ok thanks”
Then you do that
<repost> Procedural Memory is the ‘wiring’ in your brain which takes a simple command and efficiently executes in great detail without your consciousness having to micromanage. It’s the difference between you getting into your car to drive to work today and your very first driving lesson. This miraculous wiring happens while you are sleeping. It takes the experience that you’ve accrued during the day and it makes new neural pathways, interconnects existing pathways and strengthens your most used pathways. While you are asleep your muscles are inhibited, this is to facilitate the rewiring and testing of these pathways. You dream which is essentially your brain producing test data to run through, program and test the new wiring.
The result of which is that you now have a neural network which is setup to receive sensory input and the most basic of conscious command and as those electrochemical signals run through and trigger those particular neural circuits those circuits in turn send signals onward to your spinal cord to trigger actual muscle movement. Bear in mind sensory data / stimulus is not limited to the “five senses” but also includes thermoception, itch, pressure, proprioception, tension, pain, equilibrioception, stretch, chemoreception, thirst, hunger, magnetoreception, chronoception and more.
So you can think of it like when you send a parcel – all that the Consciousness has done is put a name and address on the parcel this then goes to the Procedural Memory to then look up the address on GPS and plot a route to get there, all the while receiving and responding to sensory data like where other cars are on the road, what the traffic lights are signalling, condition of the road, etc.
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