Motor Overflow in Sports
Watching
high-performance athletes, one sometimes can observe unusual facial
phenomena that the athletes would never do normally, but during the
heat of battle do with gusto. It's interesting to note that many of
the very best athletes have these muscular contortions, so the
question is why.
There are three
contortions that involve the mouth. Michael Jordan, who many
consider to be the best basketball player ever, was famous for
sticking out his tongue as he raced down the court preparing to go
airborne for a monster dunk. Jordan's fame was so great that
schoolyard players took to imitating the tongue-wag, perhaps
thinking it was done by Jordan out of bravado and not an
unconscious act. In squash, the great Peter Nicol would often be
seen demonstrated another mouth phenomenon, known as a rictus, in
which the lips are pushed tightly backward in what looks like a
half-smile, half grimace.
Opponents knew that if Nicol had that look he was fully concentrating on the task at hand, and that spelled trouble for them.
The third possible mouth
contortion is biting the lip, as one sees most often in children
who are concentrating intently on something. (Another profession
that shows its share of facial tics: professional musicians, such
as pianists and violinists, where lip biting and rictus are more
popular than tongue wagging, since licking your violin while you
play may be problematic.)
So
why does this happen? These actions are all examples of motor
overflow or motor disinhibition, in which the athlete's capacity to
direct their overall motoric response to the circumstances at hand
is diminished. A pictorial representation of the part of the human
brain that directs movement and motoric information to the rest of
the body is called a cortical homunculus (left), a fancy name for a
drawing that proportionately relates a body part with the motor
cortex of the frontal lobes of the brain.
Thus, the legs are represented in ... to read the rest of the blog please click HERE.
Opponents knew that if Nicol had that look he was fully concentrating on the task at hand, and that spelled trouble for them.
So
why does this happen? These actions are all examples of motor
overflow or motor disinhibition, in which the athlete's capacity to
direct their overall motoric response to the circumstances at hand
is diminished. A pictorial representation of the part of the human
brain that directs movement and motoric information to the rest of
the body is called a cortical homunculus (left), a fancy name for a
drawing that proportionately relates a body part with the motor
cortex of the frontal lobes of the brain.Thus, the legs are represented in ... to read the rest of the blog please click HERE.
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