HOW WE LEARN TO MOVE (ROB GRAY) NOTES PART 1

                                                           

About a month ago I posted a very short excerpt from a book I had just completed titled "How We Learn to Move" by skill acquisition specialist Rob Gray and now with some AFLW winding down I can finally start posting the numerous noted I took from it.

I'm sure you'll get plenty our of the notes on their own but if you don't have a decent background in this theory of movement, then I strongly suggest you get your hands on the actual book.

These posts coming in the next couple of weeks consist of 97 book notes over 4300 words so here we go.

PREFACE

When we acquire a new skill, we want to harness the natural inconsistency and variability in our bodies rather than treating it as “noise” and attempting to tame it through repetition.

CHAPTER 1 – THE MYTH OF THE “1” REPEATABLE TECHNIQUE

We don’t repeat our movements, but they are not completely random and variable either – they are shaped by the constraints of our environment, including our culture.   

CHAPTER 2 – WE ARE BUILT TO PRODUCE AND DETECT VARIATION

Perceptual fading refers to the tendency for objects that are completely stabilised on the eye (like using a headrest) to completely disappear from consciousness even though it is still there, as our sensory system stops signalling our brain when nothing changes in the environment. 

Adding too much noise will eventually make the signal less visible so you need to find the right amount of noise, especially when implementing differential learning.

Context conditioned-variability refers to movements of our body not occurring in a vacuum but in a set of changing internal and external factors, so we’ll never repeat the same movement twice

By possessing multiple, variable solutions to achieve the same goal is a fundamental feature found throughout nature – coined degeneracy – which occurs in a system when structurally dissimilar components can perform similar functions, being effectively interchangeable. 

Having multiple solutions creates an advantageous state of redundancy, so that we are not reliant on a single solution.

CHAPTER 3 – THE BUSINESS OF PRODUCING MOVEMENTS AND WHY WE DON’T NEED A BOSS

The Central Executive (cerebral cortex in the brain) is the boss and gives the overall plan of action after receiving information from the sensory area of the brain. The manager (motor cortex) works on the specifics needed to carry out the plan. The assembly line workers (brain stem/spinal chord) do the work and execute the movements.

The perception department takes in cues from the environment, the cognition department analyses/interprets the cues and makes predictions, the decision making and planning department plan/program the movement to be executed and the motor control department executes the movement.

A generalised motor program is a representation of a particular motor action, stored in your memory, with specific values for each of the degrees of freedom you need when moving but results in task deconstruction which a poor technique for learning.

The business model used by a flock of birds is one of self organisation which refers to the order and structure in the company arising from the interactions between the lower-level components of the system, not from some rules or a plan given by a higher-level controller. Each bird organises themselves based on the information in front of them, without the need for a boss.

The perception-action loop is environment to perception to the performer to the action the back to the environment again.

In a self organisation system, the business plan comes from often unpredictable interactions between workers. 

The advantages of solving the degrees of freedom problem via a self organisation business model is that if we can form temporary working groups of components that will interact and solve a specific movement problem, then new are much more readily adaptable to changing conditions so the birds can be successful in different directions, speeds, weather conditions etc.

The 2^nd advantage is that the self organising system is more robust to errors made by one of its workers

We don’t need a boss as we can have order/organisation in a system like the human body without the requirement of a central executive controlling everything from above.