Why is it so hard to tap your head and rub your stomach simultaneously but we use both hands to complex actions all the time with ease?

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I never understood why it is hard to rub your stomach and tap your head at the same time. It’s like you get so confused but we can grab two things at the same time or rub a desk and tap it with no problem. It’s like there’s a force field around our body.

In: Biology

Anonymous 0 Comments

Muscle memory. If you practice tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time you’ll eventually be able to it just as easily as any other task that involves two complex actions at the same time (like typing this response).

It’s just that there’s basically zero reason to ever practice tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, other than to get good at it to screw with questions like this one, so it’s reliably an action you can pick that “nobody” can do well because they haven’t developed the muscle memory for it.

It’s approximately the same reason the Vulcan hand symbol from Star Trek is amusing…nobody except Trekkies bothers to develop the muscle memory. Those that do can do it just as easily as the rest of us flip the middle finger.