Pro gamer plays with girl grabbing undistracted
The brain begins by setting a goal-pick up the fork, say, or deliver the tennis serve-and calculates the best course of action to reach it.
They found that several regions of the brain collaborate to make the computations needed for detailed motor actions. To explain how brains make these on-the-fly decisions, Reza Shadmehr and John Krakauer, then both at Columbia University, reviewed studies in which the brains of healthy people and of brain-damaged patients who have trouble controlling their movements were scanned. Each time he raises his gun, he has to make a new calculation of what movements are required for an accurate shot, combining previous experience with whatever variations he is experiencing at the moment. Since the shooter doesn’t have perfect control over his body, a slight wobble in one part of the arm may require many quick adjustments in other parts. A marksman just points his weapon and fires, and yet each shot calls for many rapid decisions, such as how much to bend the elbow and how tightly to contract the shoulder muscles. Even a sport as seemingly straightforward as pistol shooting is surprisingly complex. By understanding what goes on in athletic heads, researchers hope to understand more about the workings of all brains-those of sports legends and couch potatoes alike.Īs Jeter’s example shows, an athlete’s actions are much more than a set of automatic responses they are part of a dynamic strategy to deal with an ever-changing mix of intricate challenges. In recent years neuroscientists have begun to catalog some fascinating differences between average brains and the brains of great athletes. These are the kinds of unthinking thoughts he must make in every second of every game: how much weight to put on a foot, how fast to rotate his wrist as he releases a ball, and so on. To make the play, Jeter had to master both conscious decisions, such as whether to intercept the throw, and unconscious ones. Jeter’s quick decision saved the game-and the series-for the Yankees. Shortstop Derek Jeter managed to grab an errant throw coming in from right field and then gently tossed the ball to catcher Jorge Posada, who tagged the base runner at home plate. One of the most spectacular examples of the athletic brain operating at top speed came in 2001, when the Yankees were in an American League playoff game with the Oakland Athletics. That’s because athletes need to make complicated decisions in a flash. The qualities that set a great athlete apart from the rest of us lie not just in the muscles and the lungs but also between the ears.