SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Fully Engaged Brain Is Crucial in Game of Life
from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Basketball free throws are simple, right? Form matters. So does ritual. But to William E. Cullinan, Marquette University neuroscientist and basketball fan, there is something else at play, hidden, internal. It's called a motor program, in which signals are transmitted from a player's brain through pathways of the central nervous system.
"There is a very big difference between standing in your driveway and shooting 50 free throws and standing on the foul line in front of 18,000 screaming maniacs with the game on the line," Cullinan says. And as he continues to talk, Cullinan's world, so complex to a casual sports fan, comes to life, the free throw as neurological event.
"What we can describe in neurological terms is the idea of optimal length of a motor program," he says. "If a motor program is too short, you are not allowing the brain to be engaged fully to do what it does so well. On the other hand if it's too long, if it's too elaborate, you're engaging the brain but you're allowing more chances for error to be introduced in that program and it predicts a lack of success."
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