Specificity and Neural Confusion by Mel Siff
The issue of neuromuscular confusion being caused by training with exercises
that supposedly are not specific enough to assist in enhancing one’s
abilities in another movement or sport often comes up, as we have noted in
some of our recent discussions on the strengths and weaknesses of lifting
exercises and “functional” training.
Science indeed has shown that each part of the cerebral cortex has a
different job to do, and when one region is attending to a given task, it can
interferes with the ability of its nearest neighbors to perform their
relevant tasks at a given time. I have already pointed out that this type
of “neurological confusion” is not caused just by using tasks that are not
specifically the same or very similar to the actions of one’s specific sport,
but that even greater confusion may be cause by tasks that are very similar
in nature.
I promised to offer some practical tutorials to let you experience firsthand
some tasks which can cause great neuromuscular confusion, so here we go with
some excellent examples from Discover journal at:
Take, for example, the motor cortex, where voluntary movements of your limbs
originate. Neurons that control your right arm and leg are located near each
other within the left “precentral gyrus” of the brain, while nerve cells that
command arm and leg muscles on the left side reside in the right precentral
gyrus.
Now, try a few experiments to see how cooperative these different regions of
the brain are.
EXPERIMENT 1: Ipsilateral Arm-Leg Interaction
Sit in a comfortable chair and hold out your RIGHT ARM, palm down, then
polish an imaginary piece of furniture, using a continuous counterclockwise
motion. As soon as you have a good rhythm going, start your RIGHT FOOT
circling counterclockwise in synchrony with the motion of your arm. After
mastering this coordinated effort, REVERSE the rotation direction of your
foot while keeping your arm on its original counterclockwise path.
Pretty difficult to do, isn’t it? When the neurons controlling your arm and
the nearby leg neurons work together, they don’t disturb each other much,
just as someone playing a radio right next to you doesn’t disturb your
equilibrium if it’s tuned to a station you like. But if the person next to
you is playing punk rock and you like country, one of you has to move.
EXPERIMENT 2: Contralateral Arm-Leg Interaction
If your right arm has not become too fatigued by the above exercise, keep it
polishing that nonexistent surface and repeat Experiment 1. This time,
however, use your LEFT foot.
Circling your RIGHT ARM and LEFT FOOT in opposite directions should be very
simple. That is because the control centres for the two limbs inhabit
opposite sides of the brain and don’t interfere much with each other, even
when executing conflicting motor tasks (i.e. ones that are not similar or
specifically the same).
EXPERIMENT 3: Head-Limb Interaction
Don’t stop polishing with that right arm just yet. To polish the imaginary
table to perfection, point your face to the floor and trace an imaginary
circle on the floor with your NOSE, first counterclockwise, then clockwise.
Now give your right arm a well-deserved break and repeat the nose-tracing
procedure while your LEFT ARM takes up the polishing chore. The movement of
your dominant hand should interfere more with the nose-tracing performance
than the motion of your non-dominant hand, even though the neck muscles that
move your nose in an arc are thought to be controlled equally by both sides
of the brain. Neuroscientists haven’t determined precisely why this happens,
but one plausible explanation is that dominant regions of the brain (the left
motor cortex, if you’re right-handed) take up more neuronal resources than
non-dominant areas and therefore are more inconsiderate neural neighbors.
Researchers examining these and other intra-brain interference effects hope
that a better understanding of the relationships between neighbouring regions
of gray matter will provide important insights into how the brain creates a
whole which is greater than the sum of its parts.
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These basic experiments tell us more about how much more we need to learn
about the nature of “specificity” and intertask transfer of learning.
Other Supertrainers might like to share similar basic experiments which yield
us some insights into the nature of neural programming – over to you!
Mel Siff
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