Eye and hand skills
Jill Christmas, Rosaline Van de Weyer in Hands on Dyspraxia: Developmental Coordination Disorder, 2019
Verbal skills may nevertheless be competent, and recording output can be considerably improved when a laptop or computer is introduced with the appropriate keyboard training. Keyboard training maximises the efficiency of typing by using all the digits. With practice, motor movements become automated through the development of ‘muscle memory’. Typing where the user has to hunt for each letter is slow and time-consuming, requiring the focus to be on the typing at the expense of the content despite the child’s knowledge and intelligence.
Gender Identity and Leadership
Danielle Laraque-Arena, Lauren J. Germain, Virginia Young, Rivers Laraque-Ho in Leadership at the Intersection of Gender and Race in Healthcare and Science, 2022
It's worse in the summer, when the clothing is scanty and the light stays on 16 hours a day. I leave work at five o'clock and walk home in the full noon sun, along those wide empty boulevards that run along the train tracks in the Bronx where no shade can touch. I go six or seven blocks in the stark alone before I come upon three men posted up across the street. They’re whooping and whistling across the wide avenue at me, sharing choice opinions about my shorts and what's in them. I keep walking and tune them out. This is muscle memory.
Epigenetics of exercise
Adam P. Sharples, James P. Morton, Henning Wackerhage in Molecular Exercise Physiology, 2022
So what is muscle memory? Whenever we come across the term ‘memory’, the recollection of a specific moment or event that we have encountered in our lives that is stored in the brain (or central nervous system) often springs to mind. However, there has been a notion that certain genetic material may allow individual cells, from many bodily organs, to possess an internal memory capacity, where, for example, it has recently been described that there is a cellular and epigenetic memory residing in muscle cells. Skeletal muscle memory has therefore been defined as ‘the capacity of skeletal muscle to respond differently to environmental stimuli in an adaptive (positive) or maladaptive (negative) manner if the stimuli have been encountered previously’ (1). In the context of exercise, muscle typically responds in an adaptively advantageous manner. More so, it is now becoming evident that these advantageous molecular and phenotypic responses to exercise training are accentuated when a period of similar type exercise has previously been performed. For example, when muscle hypertrophies as a result of performing resistance training, the muscle can grow faster and larger in response to a second period of resistance training, even after a prolonged period of reduced activity or ‘detraining’ where resistance training is ceased and muscle returns to its pre-exercise state. Following studies in the 1990s demonstrating that resistance training is capable of ‘priming’ muscle for a greater adaptive response to later ‘retraining’ following several months of reduced activity (106), advanced mechanistic studies that have been conducted over the past decade have begun to unravel some of the key underlying mechanisms responsible for muscle possessing a memory of exercise at both the cellular (i.e. myonuclei) and epigenetic (i.e. DNA methylation) levels.
Wu-Wei: Concept Analysis of a Conceptual Paradox
Published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 2018
An example that seems analogous to wu-wei in practice but has fundamental differences in origin is the automatic actions of someone performing a familiar and practiced behavior. Sometimes this is called “muscle memory.” A person enacts the different moves, adjustments made as needed, and the progression through this is spontaneous and without deliberation, narration, or a self-conscious awareness. This could be the effortless, instant application of different martial arts maneuvers in reaction to each movement of their sparring partner. This could be an experienced driver performing all of the varied surveillance and constant minor adjustments in reaction as one drives down the road, without conscious thought of each step. In action, this is analogous to wu-wei. The fundamental difference arises in the genesis of the two. The automaticity of familiar behaviors starts as conceptual focus and learning. It begins with deliberate focus on the constituents, and then putting them together and practicing until conscious, goal-directed behavior is no longer needed for their performance. Wu-wei, in contrast, is never about conceptual thinking, conscious focus, or goal-directed behavior. And so while automaticity of behaviors like this can partially help to illustrate wu-wei empirically, we should remain mindful of their fundamental differences as well.
Functional rehabilitation of a person with transfemoral amputation through guided motor imagery: a case study
Published in Physiotherapy Theory and Practice, 2021
Rebecca Matalon, Jane E. Freund, Srikant Vallabhajosula
The positive effects of MI may be the result of activating the appropriate neurophysiological pathways to re-train the individual’s motor program for successful task completion (Warner and McNeill, 1988). The signals sent through the neuromusculoskeletal system during MI appear to play a large role in building muscle memory to either create a novel program or to re-activate known functional patterns. Particularly significant are the participant’s TUG performances demonstrating a capacity to complete the test with a standard walker, a single point cane, and independently. The ability to walk independently after seven years of requiring a standard walker for gait and balance tasks, demonstrated marked functional improvement within only four weeks of MI intervention. These results are further supported by Kawashima, Mita, and Yoshikawa (2013) who reported the enhancement of phantom limb awareness post mirror reflection-induced visual feedback. Kawashima, Mita, and Yoshikawa (2013) suggested that the motor command to the missing limb can be re-activated by an appropriate therapeutic strategy, such as mirror therapy. Despite the differences between mirror therapy and script-based motor imagery, both modalities utilize similar principles of imagining physical movement to activate the motor cortex.
What are the factors affecting dual-task gait performance in people after stroke?
Published in Physiotherapy Theory and Practice, 2022
Birsen Muci, Ilke Keser, Aydin Meric, Gulcin Kaymak Karatas
This study has some limitations. Firstly, it was possible to assess gait performance with gait speed although it is not only determinant of the gait. It is necessary for the other parameters to be assessed in detail in further studies. Secondly, people after stroke who were unable to mobilize without assistance and had severe cognitive impairment were excluded as the tasks were too difficult for them to fulfill. Therefore, the results of this study may not be generalized for the entire stroke population. The reliability of carrying a glass of water task was only fair. It may be assessed by another test in future research. Additionally, it should be noted that the results may be sensitive to the order of the tests applied in dual-tasks. In this study, cognitive-task is followed by motor-task and single-task. A study in which cognitive tasks precede the others may provide variant results. In further studies, the effect of “muscle-memory” may be negated by randomizing the order of the gait types in each group. Lastly, a single test was used to assess cognitive impairment in the current study. The test chosen for cognitive functions includes attention in addition to language abilities as their aim of assessment of task performance. However, it does not include executive functions. The observed effect may be stronger if additional cognitive tests, namely the ones including executive functions, are also utilized in future research.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Explicit Memory
- Introspection
- Memory Consolidation
- Motor Learning
- Temporal Lobe
- Brain
- Procedural Memory
- Motor Skill
- Neuroanatomy of Memory
- Encoding