Working in Movement

The other day I wrote about zombie learning, the ability to execute learned tasks more or less without thinking about them. Now there's an fMRI-based study that examines this a little further. In a study headed by Duke professor Ian Dobbins, people (in a fMRI contraption) were repeatedly asked to compare the size of various objects to a shoebox. At first, fMRI images showed activity in the cortex as people thought about it and actively made the comparison. But as the trials progressed, the images showed the answer coming from more automatic parts of the brain. The subjects could give an accurate answer without having to actively perform a comparison or even think about it too much.

This seemed like a blinding flash of the obvious to me, but then I read that it worked even with people with amnesia, who could not actively remember previous answers. The images showed the same pattern in their brains.

I'm not sure what to make of all this. But it is somewhat strangely comforting that learning can happen without much conscious intention or intervention. Or maybe not. I suppose it depends on what is being learned.