When humans throw things, how are we able to accurately predict how much force is required to throw the object a certain distance?
In: Biology
I hope that someone could translate this into ELI5 as I don’t think I’ve done an amazing job.
The human mind builds a conceptual model of reality. The model is updated based on new experiences. It starts with our ‘thinking’ part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. We commit an action, then our senses feed back to the brain how well we did. Our ‘proprioception’ tells us where all our limbs moved to (you know where your arms are, even in the dark). Our ‘vestibular’ system in our ears feeds back information about balance and gravity. Specific receptors in our skin and muscles feed back information about forces on the body. Our eyes feeds back information about the target and our accuracy. We consciously and subconsciously adjust to achieve our desired outcome (throwing something at a target). The brain computes all this information and updates itself, like the way that machines learn.
A couple of little seahorse shaped ‘hippocampi’ structures help transfer our conscious learning into unconscious learning.
As we commit learning into long term memory the skill is imprinted in deeper parts of the brain.
We call it ‘muscle memory’ but it’s really the nervous system, not the musculoskeletal system that stores the information.
If we lived on Mars, or if the light from the sky were bright red, or if the force from gravity moved around, our brain would create a different model of reality so that we could interact with the world more effectively. Brains are plastic in that they can morph and rewire themselves in just a couple of weeks. Really I find it fascinating.
Experience, mostly. Our minds are constantly working to predict the future; what will happen if A happens? What about B? Or C? As we experience new things, our predictions get better and better. Eventually, our predictions are so good we can do things like throw things accurately.
Practice.
The more you interact with things in the real world, the more you realize how much force is required to perform certain actions.
You feel the weight of the object in your hand, is it heavy or light? You gauge the distance you need to throw it, is it close or far?
Do it enough times, like if you play catch a lot or join a sports team, and you can fine-tune that skill to pinpoint accuracy. Jugglers for example.
But it’s the same as any other skill. Practice makes perfect.
I’m guessing trial and error/experience/understanding the effects that gravity/wind resistance have on an object. If you’ve never thrown anything in your life you probably wouldn’t be able to predict how much force to use.
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