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Soccer Superstar Plays With Very Low Brain Activity
jones_supa (887896) writes "Brazilian superstar Neymar's (Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior) brain activity while dancing past opponents is less than 10 per cent the level of amateur players, suggesting he plays as if on "auto-pilot", according to Japanese neurologists Eiichi Naito and Satoshi Hirose. The findings were published in the Swiss journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience following a series of motor skills tests carried out on the 22-year-old Neymar and several other athletes in Barcelona in February this year. Three Spanish second-division footballers and two top-level swimmers were also subjected to the same tests. Researcher Naito told Japan's Mainichi Shimbun newspaper: "Reduced brain activity means less burden which allows [the player] to perform many complex movements at once. We believe this gives him the ability to execute his various shimmies." In the research paper Naito concluded that the test results "provide valuable evidence that the football brain of Neymar recruits very limited neural resources in the motor-cortical foot regions during foot movements"."
You don't need much brain for running around kicking a ball.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Soccer is literally one of the dumbest sports around.
The field is huge, so there aren't really any space constraints.
The objective is as simple as could be: kick a ball around.
The ball is large.
The nets are large, especially compared to the size of the human trying to guard them.
The pace is rather slow, even during bursts of "activity".
Any sort of physical contact above a slight nudge will get a player penalized.
It's like every single aspect of the game has been crafted to be slow, dumb and easy. I have no fucking idea how a single match can attract 100,000 third-worlders to attend in person, who will sit there for 90+ minutes to watch a boring, uninspiring "sport".
I'm only an armchair cognitive scientist, but my interpretation of this result is that it shows how an expert player has integrated the knowledge of how to play as a skill. The player no longer has to think through each situation and plan a response, the brain recognizes patterns and produces a response automatically. This allows for a higher-level of play because the player's conscious mind is free to act at a higher level, producing better tactics and strategy.
With a sample size of 1, what can this possibly prove?
Sounds like Captain Obvious has struck again by "proving" a common "truth" that everyone already knew.
So what would happen if he used 100% of his brain !!!!
I guess that's a sexier headline than "Expert Soccer Player Has Good Muscle Memory", and it does tie into that recent bit of excitement down in Brazil, but otherwise I'm not seeing anything in the summary that comes as a surprise... Is it that part where they quantify the differences in neural activity between "expert" and "amateur"?
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Malcolm Gladwell has an interesting take with his 10,000 hour theory. If you are passionate about something and you live and breath it for long enough, you obviously get good at it. Most people are not quite so fanatical - but this is a choice, meaning they could be if they wanted to. And what is intelligence anyway? How do you quantify it such that one person is born with more of it than someone else?
Some people turn of thought when in a fight. It can be a learned talent and it makes ones response much faster and blows delivered much more accurate. The catch is that when in that state extra violence can be delivered as the person is on auto pilot. Courts have not dealt with this as so few people who do this can verbalize what was going on. I'm not so certain that the true capacity to form intent exists in a person in that state of mind. Even advanced chess players can get into a similar state in which they can calculate chess moves like a machine but are sort of not human for a bit after the game is over. A portion of their minds has been diverted elsewhere and it makes them sort of silly emotionally.
They should not be in college and at some schools people on the Football team get a free pass in just about all classes.
I'm sure we'll get plenty of prejudice and 'lol sports are dumb' here, but TFA compares the brain activity of a top professional player with that of an amateur, and it only shows that the pro needs to think less to perform.
It's something you are born with. You can hone it, as this guy's done, but the bulk of the work was done before you could even talk.
Actually, that's not right at all. Research shows more & more the link between intelligence and environment & experience.
You don't have to write such a boring and lengthy piece of crap to tell people that.
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You let your medulla most of the work. There's very little reason to spend any time on what's commonly thought of as higher functioning when you're focused on sight/reaction. Any "thought" is devoted only to grasping the topographical and tactical situation and mildly guiding yourself through it. This is what allows you to coordinate the multiple movements. Anyone promoting that this is dumb is merely rationalizing their inability to do it.
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems that one has never before encountered.
So he plays using "automatic" skill. Every target shooter knows that place. Every cook flipping an egg knows that place. Hell, everybody knows that place. When you're first learning to drive, making a left-hand turn or backing out of a parking place requires lots of thought about HOW to do it. After long practice, you don't think about it, you simply do it. The trick, in soccer, or shooting, or writing code, anything that requires sustained performance, is to stay in that place.
Don't mistake it ... this doesn't mean that it is not necessary to think to have the job done.
This means that some people has the capability of turning off some parts of their brain that they don't need in some specific moment to focus better in what they are doing. This is not negative, this is a very special capacity.
I could call this the "soldier effect". A good soldier is the one that when given the order to kill perform the task without any complain. But a bad soldier could not to decide to kill because is thinking very much. The same happens with terror, then somebody is terrified he/she doesn't perform what is important, because the brain (that it is confused in that moment) will take the place of the automatic internal system that really knows what to do.
Corollary: to use very much the brain doesn't mean that we do a better job. It depends on what the job is.
Actually, that's not right at all. Research shows more & more that intelligence is highly heritable.
What is not true is the classist notion that intelligence is 100% inherited.
How about some comparisons with other professional sports?
We don't care about his brain activity kicking a ball, what about when he's biting someone, is it 0% activity zombie mode activated?
Should be no surprise to anyone who's every played a videogame: he's in "flow" mode.
Which raises the question: how is this news for nerds?
That's a common misperception of what Gladwell write. His actual formulation was 10,000 hours + talent + opportunity.
The foot kicks the ball itself, like the bamboo leaf slowly bends under the weight of the snow, then releases the clump of snow without thought.
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Indeed. 10,000 hours is the only ingredient that nearly everyone can put in.
Obligatory Norvig reference...
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Is there a lot more activity somewhere else in his nervous system? Perhaps we distribute the processing load as we learn the moves. IIRC I've read a couple of papers that suggest that more processing than we realize takes place in our retinas when we do object recognition. I'd guess if you measured the brain activity of someone who's been driving for a couple of decades while they're driving, you'll find a lot less brain activity than someone who's just started. Maybe that's why the newbie has so much trouble with it -- it's an activity that requires a lot of reflexive movement and the newbie hasn't learned those yet. I've noticed that when I get in a car where the controls are a bit different, my eyes don't know where to go to gather the information that I need right now and I actually have to think about it. Could be a symptom of that...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Well trained physical activity is done by your medulla oblongata which means it is done closer to the input and outputs and does not get your thinking brain involved. Thinking is indecision and slows down reaction time.
I KNEW it! Soccer really does make you stupid.
Now they need to scan the branes of NASCAR fans to prove that particular stereotype.
Actually, that's not right at all. Research shows more & more that intelligence is highly heritable.
What is not true is the classist notion that intelligence is 100% inherited.
He said there is a link between intelligence and environment & experience. He didn't even say it is a strong link. How could you possibly say he is not right at all when you completely agreed with him?
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Soccer is a great sport. Watching people run around for an hour accomplishing nothing is great if I need something to help me go to sleep.
Soccer superstars are sick
I come here for the love
Interesting perhaps, 'in the german article' they said his brain activity was lower in comparison with other professional soccer players. That *is* interesting.
But it is old news that high skilled professionals, especially if they do body work, like martial artists or artists or musicians easy get into a state called 'flow'.
"Reduced brain activity means less burden which allows [the player] to perform many complex movements at once. We believe this gives him the ability to execute his various shimmies."
That is ofc. nonsense. Instead of inventing brain dead 'explanations' they either should do some sports themselves, or cross link with other scientists.
Specializations like this happen because kinda large areas of the brain specialize on a certain activity, like the left hand of a guitarist.
While one part of the brain lowers its activity (that is what they figured) other parts have specialized into it (that is what many other brain researchers have figured long ago).
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"Research shows more & more..." is what is "not right at all".
The "more and more" refers to an increasing quantity of research, not the magnitude of the link.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Japanese martial art traditions describe a similar concept of mushin ("no mind") where actions are achieved intuitively without active thought.
At some level, most* achieve this for basic tasks. You don't need to actively think about each muscle contraction and joint movement when you walk, or type on a keyboard, etc.. A lifetime of repeating these activities has trained the brain to minimize expenditure during these tasks.
The same goes for sports, martial arts, anything requiring extensive training to master.
* but some people do, those with sensory or physical impairments.
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I think it was Bill Shankley, watching a new player try out:
" The trouble with you, lad, is all your brains are in your head."
Practicing 2x a week for 2h equals 208h per year.
In roughly 48years you have the 10,000h done.
Well, I don't know why it is called a "10,000h theory" ... after all it is a no brainer. Everyone who does some sports knows that a particular technique has to be repeated about 1000 times to work more or less and about 10,000 times to be close to perfect. But ofc. there is always room to improve even more.
The hours are less important, the repetition counts. Unfortunately if you learn something complex, you basically have to learn a few dozen basic and many more complex movements in that art.
However suppose one trains 5h each day (the art, not the additional body building, mental training, massages or gymnastics) for 6 days a week and practices 50 of the 52 weeks, he does 1500h in a single year. So from age 12 to 18 he has 9000hours .
That translated into martial arts is roughly the equivalent of a 4th DAN, but for that you need longer due to 'regulations regarding examinations', waiting periods between 2 examinations.
However I would not be scared if starting a new art. If you simply never stop you easy do it for 30 years, or longer till the rest of your life. Finally you will be an 'old master'.
We germans have a proverb or a saying, well it is more a phrase: "Das Glueck des Tuechtigen". Means roughly translated: the luck of the strenuous one. The final goal in the soccer champion ships, was such a thing. The guy giving the pass did that from an impossible position for the shooter. But the shooter somehow twisted his body, looking over his shoulder to accept the ball with his chest, from an 'impossible' angle, letting the ball drop on his left foot and placing it into the goal. 'Just like that' ... but that makes the "10,000" not a theory (in the laymen meaning of theory) but rather a physical fact.
Without his plenty of 10,000h's he would not have been able to do that, nor had the pass giver given such a pass. And it is very unlikely that someone with only 1000h training could have done that
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Timothy edits with very low brain activity.
Yeah, like a soccer player would never bite ...
Oh, wait.
Sorry buddy, you and all your trancelike enlightened 'normal' guys are just as human and fallible as the rest of us apes.
And just as likely to get violent and go berserk in certain circumstances.
He can teleport the ball into the goal?
Old news.
"You can't think and hit at the same time." --- Y. Berra.
Musicians also know the truth of this.
-dpa
The only brains you need to play soccer is the ability to throw yourself on the ground while faking that you are in mortal pain as soon as an opponent comes within 10 feet....
Doesn't take a lot of brain power to fake an ankle injury
What is thinking anyway, you go your options through pretty quickly. I think, most of the time it is just making yourself accept the situation or solution.
Depends on the martial art. The most modern practice recognizes natural talent while incorporating considerable traditional technique; I assure you, everyone does not walk into their first day of training on an equal basis -- I've been teaching for decades and I think I've seen about every level of beginner skill there is. Some people are simply gifted. Certainly from there on in we see the difference between the shows-up-once-a-week and the person who seems to be there every hour they can possibly manage.
Also, more on topic, I can definitely assure anyone who is curious that you're not doing high level thinking when executing advanced martial arts techniques.
All you really need to do to understand this is think about bike riding. When you learn, you learn, you think like crazy. Which does you very little good. But eventually, you internalize the process (that's what I call it, anyway) and you can do it while carrying on a conversation with someone else, paying almost no attention at all to the activity of riding the bike. Those near-instant balance corrections, the precise amount of handlebar control and lean for cornering, all of that comes from "underneath." Same thing for advanced MA.
That whole business about finding your calm center and holding it -- that's a real thing. If you start thinking under threat or pressure, your performance will drop like a stone. The best technique comes from a relaxed, centered condition, accepting of whatever comes.
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Then the statement is vacuous. Time will always bring more evidence for a true proposition, but that doesn't necessarily increase its importance in the wider picture.
Reminds me of the Berserkers in Viking stories, who went into battle and fought in a trance like frenzied state.
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I think this study kind of explains when you learn something so well (say, by doing it so many times), you can do it "by reflex." Perhaps what that really means is you no longer need cognitive ability to do those tasks, such as riding a bike, driving in clear conditions, or typing.
I think what they've found is that the brain becomes more reliant on on older parts of the brain that operates in the sub-conscious, perhaps like the brain stem. So doing something over and over might move the ability from the cortex down into lower parts, not unlike programming something in Java, vs assembly. Both languages can accomplish the same thing, but they way they do it is very different, as they are at different layers of abstraction.
That "Some people are born with the ability to simply "do it"" part.
If there was any truth in that, there'd be a certain statistical probability for occurrence of such "Ubermensch" who are "born with the ability to simply "do it"".
So... let's say that it's something as rare as an IQ of 150. That's 1 person in 2330.
Or, about 3024000 people on the planet today.
Who could "simply do it". Whatever the "it" may be. Cause they have instant access to "the zone, or flow".
There'd be 3 million of 'Jack of all trades" experts IN EVERYTHING roaming around, looking like a Hitler's wet dream, cause they'd have perfect physique as they would be getting maximum levels of exercise from simply sitting on their ass and watching porn all day.
3 million people who could outplay a concert pianist who trained his/her whole life, after an afternoon with an instrument they never played before.
3 million people who could pass any test in record time cause all tests are designed with ordinary humans in mind. They'd be wiping their asses with diplomas.
Unless they'd prefer to wipe their asses with Fortune 500 stock cause they'd be cracking that whole economy thing wide open.
Cause they were "born with the ability to simply "do it"".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Sadly for Brazil, Neymar went through the recent World Cup with very low soccer playing activity as well. Brazil's defense seemed to exhibit very low brain activity as well.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Brazilian superstar
Super what? 7-1
They know music, they know their instrument, but a lot of thought goes into presentation. Would be interesting to see if they're running on autopilot or if their brain is totally engaged.
Is this likely related to how I tend to miss often and make frequent blunders in first-person multiplayer shooters like TF2... but if I'm a little bit drunk and play said game, I do -significantly- better?
My brain activity is abysmally low when I am coding. I must be engaging hardly 5% of my brain during coding. Often times when I am debugging my own code, "what the hell was I *thinking*?" But now I realize I must not have been thinking at all. I must have been a coding superstar unbeknownst to myself.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's something you are born with. You can hone it, as this guy's done, but the bulk of the work was done before you could even talk.
Actually, that's not right at all. Research shows more & more the link between intelligence and environment & experience.
Actually, that's not right at all. Research shows more & more that intelligence is highly heritable.
He said there is a link between intelligence and environment & experience. He didn't even say it is a strong link. How could you possibly say he is not right at all when you completely agreed with him?
I think you need to look over the discussion again. Something doesn't add up with your logic and/or comprehension skills.
Well either that or we need to rethink how we measure brain activity.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
When grading expertise on any given task/process, the top level ("Master") is usually defined to be when the person can not even explain how she is doing it, everything is automated to such a degree that "the solution was obvious".
Magnus Carlsen used to play even faster than he is doing these days, but he explains that this is not because to takes him longer to figure out the best possible moves, but because he has to take the time afterwards to do all the required calculations to confirm his instinctual choices.
He has also explained after some really complicated end games where he has kept on playing for small advantages, eventually turning "obvious draws" into wins, that "it was very easy, I just had to play the only possible move".
I believe the foot/leg motor skills of a Neymar is comparable to those of a world champion orienteer: The best orienteers can run cross-country, through rocks, stones, windfall & vegetation, while studying an incredibly detailed map in order to navigate, making it impossible to focus on the ground while looking at the map. This means that the actual broken field running must use a small amount of brain capacity, all the movements are fully automated.
I know that Petter Thoresen (former multiple world champion) once was told to do a training race in Germany while a champion Kenyan cross country runner would tail him to check his technique: Even while orienteering Petter could run fast enough that the x-c runner was dropped after less than a mile.
Terje
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Talent is from what I understood really the drive and the natural attraction that would let the person endure the 10,000 hours of practice (and even enjoy it, for part of it anyway). The opportunity goes without saying (if you practice for 10,000 hours you have the opportunity). So I think it's not that much of a misperception that practicing something for 10,000 hours makes you very very good at it.
I was, years ago, a very skilled carpenter. What i have learned since I put my tools down is that now, almost 20 years later, I still know how to do those things, but I physically can't. My hands and body have lost the skill, the micromotor skills, the knowledge if you will, that they used to hold. I am not so much sad about it, but aware that many of the things that were trained into me are lost now that I am older and no longer practiced.
The other thing I know is that those skills can come back quickly if I want to practice them again. But really, I don't. I do little projects here and there, but as I am seeing the "knowledge" come back, the project is finished and I go back to my desk and my classroom while the "knowledge" drains away again.
Bittersweet.
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That is normal, after all roughly every 15 years your whole body is completely replaced by new cells. Don't remember if it is 10 or 15 or 20, likely easy to google :) Without practicing the nervous system 'regrows' to optimize what you are doing right now, which seems not to include your 'old art'.
So obviously the nervous system loses its 'specialization' for your old art, so are the muscles and the brain.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Who said you need intelligence to,play football? Mate, just look at David Beckham. There's not much lower in terms of human intelligence, he even got to the USA to play! fucking hell man, a place were they don't even know what football is!
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