Inconsistent? Good
Anyone who has ever stepped on a tennis court understands all too well the frustration that comes with trying to master the serve, and instead seeing ball after ball go sailing out of bounds in different directions. Rather than cursing these double-faults, Harvard researchers say errors resulting from variability in motor function can play a critical role in learning. Though variability is often portrayed as a flaw to be overcome, a new study conducted by Maurice Smith, the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Bioengineering, and Bence Ölveczky, the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences, suggests that variability in motor function is a key feature of the nervous system that helps lead to better ways to perform a particular action. The study is described in a Jan. 12 paper published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. “I think this changes the paradigm of how we think about motor variability and performance,” Ölveczky...