The Latest Science on Motor Skill Learning - Catching up with Moshe Feldenkrais
The Latest Science on Motor Skill Learning - Catching up with Moshe Feldenkrais
Andrew Huberman Collects the Data, Gives the Lowdown, Validates the Feldenkrais learning technology
My favorite science hunk, Dr. Andrew Huberman, has yet to specifically cover the Feldenkrais Method, but his recent Huberman Lab Essential - How to Learn Skills Faster is a powerful validation of Moshe’s ahead-of-his-time genius. This pod links Moshe’s methodology to the latest neurophysiology and brain science discoveries about how humans learn.
I have listened to the pod and have excerpted - and lightly edited - the transcript so you don’t have to. Here are what I found to be the most interesting and applicable content. Enjoy.
Repetition and Error
The pod opens with a description of the “Super Mario Effect,” which ties expectations to effort and the importance of repetition in achieving results. Subjects solved an online puzzle involving Super Mario that enabled researchers to determine the optimal motivations for learning. Half the subjects lost points for making an incorrect guess; the other half were simply told '“that was incorrect, try again.” The subjects who were told to try again did so more often, and in the end were more successful, as a group, than the people who were chasing points.
In the Method, as we know, repetition and error are key components of a lesson. “And do this twenty times” is a familiar instruction. And now we have data showing curiosity and repetition without penalty result in more successful learning.
Huberman interprets:
“if you want to learn something you need to know if it's open loop or closed loop and you need to know what to focus, on where to place your perception. And that seems like a tough task. But errors will tell you exactly what to focus on and the reason is that the errors actually cue your nervous system to two things: one to error correction and the other is it opens the door or the window for neuroplasticity. Errors tell your nervous system that something needs to change…”
[T]he neurobiological explanation for learning a skill is you want to perform sa many repetitions per unit time as you possibly can at least when you're first trying to learn a skill. The winners are always generating more repetitions. ou're learning how to dance and you're stepping on the other person's toes or you're not getting it right, those errors opening the possibility for plasticity. If you walk away at that point you've made the exact wrong choice, without errors the brain is not in a position to change itself errors actually cue the frontal cortex networks - what we call top down processing - and the neuromodulators things like dopamine and acetycholine and epinephrine that will allow for plasticity. So these errors cue the brain that something was wrong and they open up the possibility for plasticity.
[I]t's what's sometimes called the framing effect: it frames what's important. This isn't about motivation to learn; this is about how you actually learn. So the key is designate a particular block of time that you are going to perform repetitions work for time and then try and perform the maximum number of repetitions that you can do safely that's going to be the best way to approach learning for most sessions… Paying attention to the errors that you [enables] rewards that will be generated again - these are neurochemical rewards from the successful performance of a movement.
Rest is Essential to Learning
We love our rests! And for good reason.
“After a session you need to do something very specific, which is nothing. That's right after a skill learning session there's a replay of the motor sequence that you performed correctly and there's an elimination of the motor sequences that you performed incorrectly. okay so to be very clear about this after I finish the training… [W]e don't really have a name for this postlearning kind of idle time for the brain; the brain isn't idle at all it's actually scripting all these things - in reverse - that allow for deeper learning and more quick learning.
[I]f I just sit there and close my eyes for 5 to 10 minutes, even one minute ,the brain starts to re-play the motor sequence in a way that appears important for the more rapid consolidation of the motor sequence of the pattern and to accelerated learning. So you have this basic learning session and then a period of [rest] afterwards [lets] the brain rehearse what it just did.
Depending on where we are in the learning process, pacing matters
This is a slight variation on the Feldenkrais pedagogy, which asks students to move very slowly when learning new moves. The science apparently offers the refinement that very slow movement at the onset of learning may be too soon. Frankly, this validates my experience of finding very slow movement at the onset confusing:
“[W]e hear a lot about chunking, about breaking things down into their component parts, but one of the biggest challenges for skill learning is knowing where to place your attention.
What's been shown by the scientific literature so we're breaking the learning process down into its component parts as we get more and more skilled - meaning as we make fewer and fewer errors per a given session per unit time - that's when attention can start to migrate from one feature such as the motor sequence to another feature. On a trial to trial basis, [however] some showed that very slow movements can be beneficial if one is already proficient in a practice.
When should you start to introduce slow learning? Well, it appears that once you're hitting success rates of about 20 - 30%, that's where the super slow movements can start to be beneficial but if you're still performing things at a rate of 5 - 10% correct and the rest are errors, then the super slow movements are probably not going to benefit you that much.
Tempo Can Help More Advanced Learners Improve
We often see instructions such as “do this quickly” in the middle of a sequence. Huberman introduces the Metronome as a tool for improvement.
Athletes find is they can perform more repetitions, they can generate more output, [when timing their movements to a metronome, set to ever-increasing speeds.]. What's interesting about this, and is cool, is that your attention is now harnessed to the tone to the metronome, and not necessarily to what you're doing in terms of the motor movement. You need a bit of proficiency; again this is for people who are intermediate or Advanced intermediate or Advanced.
You're essentially doing is you're creating an outside pressure, a contingency so that you generate again more errors. [E]rrors harness your attention to this outside contingency: this metronome that's firing off and saying now go now go now go now.
Visualization is NOT the same as moving; is most helpful to more advanced students
Imagining, visualizing movements are core to some lessons. Students are asked to break down complex movements in their minds before doing them. We have been told this is as effective as DOING the move. Science now backs my personal experience and says “not so fast.’
[We are told that] imagining contracting a muscle can lead to the same increases in performance as actually executing that skill. That's simply not the case. However it can supplement or support physical training and skill learning in ways that are quite powerful. Mental rehearsal, closing one's eyes typically, and thinking about a particular sequence of movement and visualizing it in one's “Mind's Eye creates activation of the upper motor neurons.
That's very similar, if not the same, as the actual movement. and that makes sense because the upper motor neurons generate the command for movement, not the actual movements. They are not the ones that actually execute the movement. The actual movements are generated by lower motor neurons. If you want to use visualization training great but forget the idea that visualization training is as good as the actual behavior.
That's just not the way the nervous system works I'm sorry I don't mean to burst anybody's bubble but your bubble is made of myths. The fact of the matter is that the brain, when it executes movement is generating proprioceptive feedback and that proprioceptive feedback is critically involved in generating our sense of the experience. Visualization doesn't create the same the same chemical millieu, the environment as actual physically engaging in the behavior.
The pod ends with recommendations for supplements that might improve learning, but we don’t go there. What I found especially interesting were the comments on the effectiveness of superslow movement and visualization on beginner’s learning. Yes, we want to go slow and test our awareness, but using these tools in mixed level classes may not be appropriate in beginner classes, where the ‘error rate’ is high.