The Incredible Brain Of Simone Biles

Team USA gymnast Simone Biles twists and flips through air with a seemingly gravity-defying buoyancy. With great precision, she lands on the balance beam as if the 4-inch-wide ledge is an extension of her own body. As the 19-year-old gymnast competes in the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro this week, pulling out the types of combinations that have been repeatedly called “impossible,” you may ask what it is exactly that sets her apart — is it only practice? Or does Biles have a particular brain wiring that’s given her a repertoire of movements far beyond a human’s humble ability to walk straight and a traditional gymnast’s perfect 10? Scientists haven’t looked into Bile’s brain, but if they were given the chance, they wouldn’t even necessarily know which area to peek at first. “It’s a difficult question,” said Thomas Jessell, co-director of Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and a neuroscientist who has studied movement for over three decades. Understanding how someone like Biles acquires her athletic skills is “an issue where no one bit of the brain or the spinal cord is going to give you the definitive answer.” The closest idea we have as to what makes someone a super-athlete like Michael Jordan or Biles is that they may have been born with a slightly better-wired motor system.  “It could be that the wiring that happened in...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news