How does Muscle memory works? How can muscle remeber tasks?
In: Biology
Muscle memory works in the nerves, not the muscle.
By repeating a set of actions a lot, the nerve pathways leading up to the action gets reinforced. Overtime the nerve pathway is so established that you do not need to actively think of what you are doing to perform the action
There is a misconception that the term muscle memory is a term related to how muscles learn to do certain tasks which is done through repetition of the task mainly and the brain refines how much each muscle should flex/ relax. That why in sports athletes would repeat the same shot or movement in practice so the movement gets refined and the reaction is instant in a real game.
What muscle memory actually is related to muscle growth; where a muscle that has grown before from work out and shrunk (from lack of of work out) will grow muscles quicker when they start working out again than those who hasnt grown their muscle in the first place.
<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.
edit: Spelling
Okay. So humans can’t multitask. We do one thing at a time, thats it.
Muscle memory works in the brain, not the nerves or the muscle.
What we do is batch up tasks. Like a computer. It’s part of why driving is so stressful and hard to learn, but then when you learn it, it seems effortless.
It’s also the basis for most pro-level sports and athletics. As well as martial arts and other combative.
The tasks for backing up a car might be enter car, start car, put foot on brake, look over right shoulder, back up into street. By the time you’ve done it 1000 times your brain has just put all the instructions into a batch and runs through them without much thought.
By the same token, when you first pick up a tennis racket you have to consciously hold it right, consciously make sure it’s facing right for your swing/hit, make sure your feet are right, your body is balanced right, you can move your hip freely. By the time you’ve won 1000 games…your brain is just like “get the ball” and your body just does what it needs to do to get there.
Martial arts are the same way. You know how Kung fu and karate just look different? Even if you know nothing there’s a pretty clear visual distinction between the way they move. That’s taught. And comes from muscle memory. The first time you throw a punch you have to pay attention to every variable. Your instructor will correct you, balance wrong, foot out of place, overextended etc etc. Once you get all those right and repeated…you just punch.
Actually, back in the day I stressed so much about tying a belt right. I could not explain to you how to do it any more. But if I pick it up and tell myself to put it on, it will come out tied right. The brain is a crazy thing.
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