Maps and movement
How do you learn? How do you know where your body is located in space? Why is it important to collect errors and why are certain styles of teaching more effective than others?
These are the questions that regularly occupy my brain space, which is why I spiral down rabbit holes involving research on topics like motor learning, neuroscience, and proprioception. And I figure if I wonder about these things regularly, maybe someone else does, too, and that someone might like to read about how these things work.
If that person is you, you are in luck—this post is for you. While it (probably) won’t answer all of your burning questions, it’s a place to start and (hopefully) inspire critical thinking. So without further ado, let’s start our scintillating tale of the science of motor learning from the beginning: in the womb.
When you are forming in the comforts of the dark, aqueous environment that is your mother’s womb, you don’t have a whole lot to do. In fact, it’s probably the only time in your life you will be left alone to do whatever you want.
Since your central nervous system isn’t developed and you have no past to refer to, you get to focus solely on what’s happening right now, in this very moment. It’s like a lesson in mindfulness 101—how to be present with yourself.
You begin making spontaneous general movements. These movements, also called motor babbling, erupt from seemingly no where, and since you have no frame of reference for how to move, there is no general coordination to them. Some of those movements trigger a pleasant sensation, and since you are practicing paying attention, the pleasant sensation that emerges causes you to repeat the movement. The motor pattern creates sensation; the sensation triggers an intention to want to perform the movement again.
This is also the only time in your life when motor output will not be preceded by any sort of sensory input. Spontaneous movements are no longer a possibility when you have a fully developed central nervous system—sensory input will always be coming in once you exit the womb, and that input will forevermore affect your motor output.
As your central nervous system continues to develop and you begin to acquire a general map of different parts of your body and which parts are interesting to touch (hands, eyelids, face), you become curious. This curiosity creates more movement in different ways, which continues to build a sensorimotor map. This basic blueprint will serve you well when you are no longer in the dark and you are no longer weightless. It’s the blueprint that will allow to curl and uncurl your fingers, kick your legs, and open your mouth to cry or eat.
This blueprint is your starting point; it will continue to get updated throughout your life based on how you use your body, what sensory input is associated with the beginning of a movement and what sensory input is associated with the end of a movement. When you don’t use certain ranges of motion, the sensorimotor map fades, losing a bit of color for that specific movement pattern.
As you sleep and your body twitches, researchers think that is you updating your sensorimotor map, a holdover from the spontaneous movement that occurred in utero. This occurs until your last breath, an indication that your brain spends your entire life trying to make sense of your body in the world.
When you are injured or experience acute physical trauma like surgery, the sensorimotor map becomes less clear, as though someone scribbled over where the connections used to be.
When you begin learning a new skill, you develop new sensorimotor maps, specific to the skills you are learning. These maps become stronger the more you practice the skill, and the maps aren’t only representative of the successes. You develop a map for errors, too, a map that delineates when a sensory input leads to an unwanted motor output.
Throughout your lifetime you will collect many sensorimotor maps, maps for eating, maps for weeding, maps for playing instruments, maps for lifting weights or doing yoga or dancing, a map for you and how you interact with the world. All of these maps are impacted by sensation that comes in from the outside and sensation generated from the inside. The clarity of the maps depends on your relationship with the activities and whether you find them rewarding, interesting, or curiosity provoking. It also depends on how much time and energy you devote to fine tuning the details, painting a clear connection that links a specific sensation with movement.
Your brain doesn’t view the body you occupy as a series of muscles or separate body parts. Your internal sense of your self is determined through how you respond to the sensation you receive, sensation that comes from what you see, hear, touch, and experience. The brain knows movement, and even though there are different areas of your body that are more sensory rich than others, all of the parts are interconnected, providing information about this exact moment in time. And because your body isn’t static, it’s constantly in motion, even if the motion is small, your internal image of you isn’t static. It’s an ever-changing picture, a kaleidoscope that shifts as you shift.
There is so much more about the reward system, learning, and mapping, but that would be a book, not a blog. The brain/body connection is so much more than a collection of nerves to a collection of muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Understanding the role you, the student, or you, the teacher or coach plays in affecting the act of learning and, as a direct result, the act of moving, can change a person’s entire experience.
Sense. Move. Sense. Repeat.
*Like what you’re reading? Sign-up for the monthly newsletter here to be notified of more content.
References:
Fagard J., Esseily R., Jacquey L., O’Regan K., & Somogyi E., (2018). Fetal origin of sensorimotor behavior. Frontiers in Neurobiotics. 12(23). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5974044/
Vugt F.T. van, & Ostry D.J., (2019). Early stages of sensorimotor map acquisition: learning with free exploration, without active movement or global structure. Journal of Neurophysiology, 122(4), 1708-1720. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31433958/
Vugt F.T. van, & Ostry D.J., (2018). The structure and acquisition of sensorimotor maps. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 30(3), 290-306. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29131742/
Muren D., Root V., Keiliba P., Cloe D., & Makin T.R., (2022). Beyond body maps: information content of specific body parts is distributed across the somatosensory homunculus. Cell Reports, 38(11). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211124722002595