Muscle Memory – what is actually happening on a cellular level? How is it that my fingers know where the keyboard buttons are without conscious thought?
In: Biology
Oh oh! This is really dumbed down because i no longer have text book and it has been ages; but there is a portion of your brain that interprets where your body and limbs are in relative space at all times. Its how you can reach over and swat an ant crawling on you off without even looking. The sensation of touch on your leg has neurons firing into your brain and that location is attuned and you can reach over and flick away the bug.
Now muscle memory is just that. Your muscles being conditioned over time to do a series of movements when prompted. Its a conditioning so your brain doesn’t have to work to do something. So there’s also the development thing. When we are babies we don’t realize objects are still there if they are removed from sight. But as we develope, we begin to realize ” the teddy bear isn’t really gone forever.. It moved to behind dad’s back.” Well…in more babble terms of course. As we grow older and older we develope deeper thinking and memory. So, you are aware your car is still outside, what color it is, etc. You can recall all of this info now. A keyboard is much the same. We know its still there, unchanged as we look away, and as we memorize the keypad over time it becomes a significant memory, especially with extended and repeated use. We all start off with the chicken peck typing, and the learning curve varies, but you get the idea.
Then it all comes together. The sensation of the touch of our palm on the keyboard is sent to the brain, the brain recognizes where your fingers are in relative space, and you’ve memorized that the letter h is just to the left of your index finger, and an overly complex system of more neurons firing back and forth ensues as you reach over and type the letter h. In a matter of milliseconds! Uh..
Im not sure how well I did there. Psychology class was brutal.
Your fingers don’t know. Your brain knows. It’s just not an “explicit memory” but one in your subconciousness.
Your brain remembers the correct letter appears when your finger is in a certain position, and it’s unnecessary to waste thoughts of your conscious mind on such details.
It’s the same with riding a bike. Your brain knows to turn left you have to first steer right and then lean left. Everyone does it like that, but most people don’t even notice it.
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 and test the new wiring.
The result of which is that you now have a neural network which is setup to received 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 signally, condition of the road.
Muscle memory what I know is actually two different things in your body. One is in your brain and the other is in your muscle.
Starting with the muscle – The more you do one thing the more you body gets used to doing this thing. On the level of your muscles this can include building new nerves/fibres or reinforcing the ones especially in use when doing a certain task. It also leads to the pathway from brain to muscle being more “alert” or “effective”.
With your brain you can think of every action you take and think fires of multiple regions of your brain – those regions have to work together to make your body do what brain wants. A big part of muscle memory can be taught of being the brain learning that if you do A, you want to do B after, and C after that.
So you essentially train your brain for a sequence of tasks, the more you do this the more those pathways firing neurons in your brain gets used, the more they get used the more they get “reinforced” in your brain. You are physically making new connections and reinforcing connections in your brain when excising.
When you throw a ball not only does you brain now knows it should “queue up” a few tasks like Aiming, moving arm backwards, tensing up certain muscles and releasing at a certain interval.
I don’t know medical terms etc so this is a bit dumbed down, but it’s what I was taught in school 🙂
The cerebellum is that structure at the back bottom part of your brain. When you do anything physical that part is watching. Think of it as a large figure 8 being drawn. You have to concentrate to get its shape right.
The more you repeat an action, the tighter the figure 8 gets. The tighter it gets the better you get. At some point the figure 8 is tight enough that the cerebellum doesn’t have to concentrate on the movement.
Even then there is a small feedback loop always watching to see if you did the movement right. You go from having to concentrate to the feedback system. The feedback is part of a self correcting system and helps you get even better.
Obviously more of the brain is involved and its not actually a shape, but thats how I envision it.
I know about proprioception, and at one point in the progression of my multiple sclerosis (MS) I think I lost it. For a while, I couldn’t put a glass on the counter without looking at it, so it ended up on its side or on the floor. I couldn’t pick up something from a table except if I was actually looking at that thing.
I couldn’t look at something, then look away and still complete the action. It was extremely difficult to change how I operated, and I created a lot of messes as a result.
Is that really an MS thing, or was something else to blame?
Close your eyes and touch your nose. You might miss a few times but then you will remember what movements to do to get a good result.
I taught computer applications, word, excel, etc. After very short lectures, I’d get them started on a project, then go around the room helping them. When they were having a problem, I’d ask them to move a bit so I could use the keyboard. They’d say “Can you just tell me?” I would answer “No, because I don’t know. The fingers know.” I was unable to answer questions without my fingers.
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