The Performance Cortex: How Neuroscience Is Redefining Athletic Genius

by Zach Schonbrun

This is not simply a technical problem easily mended with conditioning or flexibility. It is wired into the brain. But why? Together with his graduate student Nicola Popp, Diedrichsen looked at his sequences and noticed some patterns. There were some transitions between chunks that were easier to produce than others. A transition from 2 to 3, for instance, involved taps of the index and middle fingers. That’s easy. That was something the participants could do relatively quickly. But when 5 was involved, especially if the pattern went 5-5, repeated pinkie presses are hard. It is difficult to reproduce the requisite amount of force, and therefore participants usually have to pause to do it. So Diedrichsen rewrote the pattern to break down into chunks that he thought would naturally require pauses anyway. For one group, the pattern went something like this: 1-2 | 3-5-1 | 3-3-2 And for another group he gave a pattern of chunking that was not so ideal: 1-2-3 | 5-1-3 | 3-2-1 | 3-4 The bad pattern actually cost participants 200 to 300 milliseconds compared to the good pattern after two days.