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New York Times Blog: How Exercise Can Help You Master New Skills

1st October, 2012

Thanks to Loren Shlaes of the Pediatric OT Blog for suggesting we featured this article!
[Source:  The New York Times Well Blog]

Can you improve your body’s ability to remember by making it move? That rather odd-seeming question stimulated researchers at the University of Copenhagen to undertake a reverberant new examination of just how the body creates specific muscle memories and what role, if any, exercise plays in the process.
To do so, they first asked a group of young, healthy right-handed men to master a complicated tracking skill on a computer. Sitting before the screen with their right arm on an armrest and a controller similar to a joystick in their right hand, the men watched a red line squiggle across the screen and had to use the controller to trace the same line with a white cursor. Their aim was to remain as close to the red squiggle as possible, a task that required input from both the muscles and the mind.
The men repeated the task multiple times, until the motion necessary to track the red line became ingrained, almost automatic. They were creating a short-term muscle memory.
Read the Rest of this Article on the New York Times.com

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