Sports, Fine and Gross Motor Skills are special types of memories that we acquire through practice and repetition. By repeating a physical task, we get better and better at it and over time, will be able to perform it perfectly without conscious thought.
We acquire Motor skills throughout our lives, from learning to crawl and pull ourselves upright, to new sporting and recreational skills as we grow, through to learning new life and hobby skills in our retirement.
Proprioception (our sense of position) when combined with Kinesthesia (our sense of movement) provides us with the ability to sense the position, location and movement of our limbs, body and head, as we move. Vestibular senses include balance, acceleration and gravity, all combine to allow us to allow us to move smoothly. Our Visual sense provides us with information about our relation to the horizon and the perceived movement of our immediate vicinity.
Special sensors in our joints, tendons, muscles and skin feed information on tension, angle and speed of our limbs, via our Central Nervous System where they are processed by our Primary Motor Cortex into coordinates and sequences of movements that create a Movement Memory Map or Motor Map for a specific activity or skill.
With sufficient repetitions, we refine and adjust our Movement Memory Maps until they become a Motor Skill so well defined and rehearsed, that we can undertake that task without conscious thought.
Rehabilitation of Fine Motor Skills?
Rehabilitation Brain Trainers can help restore and rehabilitate fine motor skills, which have been developed and refined over decades and utilized for hundreds of everyday tasks. These skills can be lost instantly in the event of a stroke or traumatic brain injury, or gradually decline in neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, or due to changes in joint biomechanics from joint replacement or osteoarthritis.
The good news is that the neurological framework of these fine motor skills remains intact and can be restored.
What are Developmental Motor Skills?
Developmental Motor Skills are critical to a child’s development, as they play an important role in building the circuits in the Brain that allow the early development of Executive Functions. Developmental Motor Skills are believed to “teach the Brain how to learn” For every month that a child is ahead of average in the acquisition of fine motor skills results in an additional 5 Intelligent Quotient (IQ) points by the time they turn 5.