The human brain prepares skilled movements such as playing the piano, competing in athletics, or dancing by âzipping and unzippingâ information about the timing and order of movements ahead of the action being performed, a new study reveals.
Experts discovered that the order and timing of movements in complex sequences are separated by the brain, before being zipped and transferred into specific movement commands, or âmuscle memoryâ, as the person begins the action.
They found that high-level sequencing of movement (such as order and timing) can be stored across several motor areas of the brain, often across several days of training and memorising action sequences, before being activated following a particular trigger such as a musical cue or a starting gun.
Interesting. Looks like you have to pay $35 to read the actual paper.
Makes me wonder if this is related to a playing problem I sometimes experience, which I call âMuscle memory considered harmfulâ.
I find I sometimes overlearn a chord change if I practice a single song too much. Then when I practice different song, I will play the change from the previous song out of habit.
Itâs like Iâve mentally merged the two chords, with a single mental trigger causing my muscles to play both of them in sequence.
Consciously âhearingâ the next chord in my head before playing it seems to help, but this is not a consistent, automatic mental habit yet.
Thereâs a lot more to playing music than what you can see and hear another player doing. I suspect what you think and feel while you are playing is really important, but is mostly invisible to a student or an audience.
To the journal. usually if you are interested in any paper contact the writers themselves and they will send you a copy free.
As for the other bit - youâve got to be mentally thinking about the next note or the one after that etc rather than what you are currently playing. The mechanics of playing should be almost autonomous from the mental process of what comes next
Seems interesting that the timing is more important than the notes
Iâve definitely been out of the game too long.
I find it quite difficult to follow everything in that abstract
I found the term zip/unzipping a bit unfortunate in the context of information storage, as weâre all used to zipped computer files, where you compress a large amount of data in a smaller package.
They seem to be talking about storing information in various loci of the cortex, which are then connected to and âzippedâ with other impulses when required.
But what do I know?
Iâd be interested to hear what practical implications these findings might have.
I read the preprint, but it was pretty tough sledding.
One thing that stuck out for me was the concept of âplanningâ. A while back I realized I couldnât just do everything by muscle memory. I have to be thinking ahead to the next chord change, strumming pattern, lyricâŚall while executing the current part Iâm playing and singing.
Never been a good multi-tasker, so this is still fairly challenging. Currently, I seem to do it a measure at a timeâŚonce Iâve landed the first chord in the new measure, I can consciously think about the next measure.
When I screw up, itâs usually because Iâve neglected to do this.
So, if I understand the paper, this planning step takes place in a certain part of the brain, while the timing and execution of the planned action is queued up and executed by other parts.
I suspect there are a lot of other implications for learning and playing music from this research, but thatâs the one I came up with.
Iâve found actually reading through the sheet music/tab on screen or via guitar pro ahead of what I am playing works well, its harder to mentally plan ahead without a prompt
