🧠 BRAIN CANDY

Your brain can practise without moving a muscle

Here’s a slightly bonkers thing your brain can do.

It can practise something you haven’t actually done.

No, I don’t mean visualising yourself becoming a millionaire while lying in bed.

Although, frankly, if that worked, I’d have retired years ago.

I’m talking about something much more interesting.

🎹 The piano experiment

Back in the 1990s, neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone and his colleagues did a fascinating experiment.

They taught people a simple sequence of notes on a piano.

One group actually played the piano.

Another group sat there and mentally rehearsed playing it — imagining the movements of their fingers without actually moving them.

Then the researchers looked at what was happening in their brains.

And this is the bit that makes you go:

Hang on a minute…

The brains of the people who had only imagined playing showed changes in the areas of the motor cortex involved in controlling those fingers.

Their fingers hadn’t been dancing across the piano.

But their brains had been rehearsing the dance.

The people who physically practised improved their performance more, so this isn’t a case of “just think about playing the piano and you’ll become Beethoven”.

Sorry.

But it was powerful evidence that mental rehearsal can actually influence the brain’s organisation.

And this isn’t just a piano party trick.

There’s a whole body of research around motor imagery — mentally rehearsing a movement without physically doing it.

Athletes use it.

Gymnasts use it.

Golfers use it.

Performers use it.

Before the body does the thing, the brain can have a little run-through.

🧠 Your brain isn’t just reacting

This is the bit I find particularly fascinating.

We often imagine the brain as sitting there waiting for something to happen:

Thing happens → brain reacts.

But the brain is considerably cleverer — and more mischievous — than that.

It’s constantly predicting.

Preparing.

Comparing.

Adjusting.

It uses what has happened before to anticipate what might happen next.

In other words, your brain is continually asking:

“What do I think is about to happen?”

And then it adjusts when reality says:

“Er… nope.”

Which brings me neatly to something I’ve been interested in for many years.

👶 The developing nervous system

In my neurodevelopment work, I spend a lot of time looking at movement, sensory information and primitive reflexes.

Primitive reflexes are automatic movement patterns that are part of early neurological development.

They’re not bad.

They’re not mistakes.

They’re actually incredibly useful.

A baby’s nervous system needs these early automatic responses to help it survive and develop.

But as development progresses, these early patterns are normally integrated as the nervous system gains greater control and more sophisticated movement becomes possible.

And here’s where I think the whole subject of neuroplasticity becomes so fascinating.

The nervous system learns through experience.

It gets information from movement.

From sensation.

From repetition.

From what happens when we try something.

And from what happens when we try it again.

And again.

And again.

🔄 The brain likes a rehearsal

Think about learning to ride a bike.

At first, your brain has absolutely no idea what it’s doing.

Balance?

Nope.

Steering?

Questionable.

Brakes?

Let’s just hope for the best.

But gradually, through repeated experience, the nervous system gets better at predicting what needs to happen.

Eventually you don’t have to consciously think:

“I shall now adjust my left hand by approximately three millimetres.”

You just ride the bike.

The nervous system has built a more efficient way of doing it.

And that is one of the reasons I’m so interested in the relationship between movement, development and learning.

⚠️ And before someone gets carried away…

Let’s put the brakes on the inevitable woo train.

You’ll sometimes hear:

“The brain can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality.”

That’s not quite right.

If I imagine eating a chocolate cake, my jeans don’t suddenly get tighter.

Sadly.

The brain does know the difference between imagining something and actually doing it.

But imagining an action can activate some of the same neural networks involved in performing it.

And that is much more interesting than pretending imagination and reality are identical.

So what does this tell us?

For me, the really exciting message isn’t:

“Think about something and your brain will magically make it happen.”

It’s this:

Your nervous system is remarkably adaptable.

It can learn.

It can rehearse.

It can predict.

It can reorganise.

And it doesn’t necessarily need exactly the same experience every single time to start building those networks.

Sometimes that happens through physical movement.

Sometimes through repetition.

Sometimes through carefully guided sensory and movement experiences.

And sometimes through mental rehearsal.

Which leaves us with a rather lovely thought:

Your brain may be practising tomorrow before tomorrow has even happened.

And if you’ve ever wondered why I get so excited about movement and neurodevelopment…

Well.

This is why. 🧠

The brain is not a finished product.

It’s a work in progress.

And frankly, I think that’s rather brilliant.