The human brain prepares skilled movements such as playing the piano, competing in athletics, or dancing by ‘zipping and unzipping’ 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 ‘muscle memory’, 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.
Publishing their findings today (6 Feb) in Journal of Neuroscience, researchers from the University of Birmingham and Bangor…
