Working in Movement

Movement involves the brain. but the brain doesn't need actual movement to get involved. Internal Learning, External Action and some other older posts here talk about that. Some Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons provide an opportunity to experience the curious (and real) imagining movement has on the quality of subsequent actual physical movements. There have been lots of implications for therapeutic and athletic applications.

The advent of brain imaging lets us take a look inside the noggins of those imagining movements. One such application, summarized on the always interesting Eide Neurolearning Blog involves applying the imagery to golf. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic tested six golfers with various handicaps (referring to the golfer's score card, not physical condition). It turned out the better golfers (those with lower scores) showed a more precise and localized pattern of brain activation during imagining their swings than the duffers.

The researchers attributed this pattern to the possibility of the high handicappers' to learn the swing well enough to make it automatic. They liken it to writer's cramp where "the severe functional disturbances can be explained in terms of a loss of automaticity and an increased need for controlled processing."

Another way to look at is that the differences between high and low handicappers was due more to inhibition than to activation, at least in the imagined swing. (It'll probably be a while before someone can do a full swing in a brain imaging machine.) That is, a big part of executing a skill depends on stopping extraneous activities so that the "right" things can happen. Stop the interference and you're at least half way home. It's curious that this seems to apply to imagined movement as well.

The fairly technical powerpoint presentation from the Cleveland Clinic researchers is here.