And finally – an important stroke, which you should definitely know…
Yes, juggling promotes ambidextrium and initiates the creation of new neurochains. They are the ones who help us manage balls in the air. But these same neurocheps forming in the head are much more universal. And in the future they will be used not only for working with balls. The range of their capabilities is unimaginably wider, which helps jugglers (children and adults) make breakthroughs in other areas of life. In particular, this will be noticeable where spatial imagination is required, namely, in geometry and physics, in history and chemistry, in geography and in labor lessons. Hand motility, sense of rhythm, intuition, orientation and capabilities of the vestibular apparatus are an incomplete list of modes in which newly created neurochips will confidently help their owners. In many ways, this is what the growth of the IQ indicator is associated with. And this is no less than 4—6% (!). Tomography studies have finally confirmed an amazing phenomenon: in just 3—4 months, the brain of a juggling person adds 5—6% to the mass! And it’s not just a lot, it’s a fantastic lot! In essence, we become more memorable, smarter, smarter, which can only be surprised and rejoiced.
Chapter 3 Balls and our Fantasia
Once, fascinated by military equipment, I learned about the existence of combat complexes capable of detecting enemy batteries. Armed with computer processors, radar stations and acoustic direction finders, these formidable mechanisms in a matter of seconds along the trajectory of the arriving shells and the acoustic features of the breaks determined where the launch was made, from which guns or installations the enemy fired. Judging by the photos and videos, these are really serious machines operating according to their cunning programs, served by qualified personnel.
And what about military equipment, you ask? Yes, despite the fact that we are talking about really complex devices, about multi-stage algorithms developed by large teams of programmers. However, something similar is built in the heads of our neurons in the shortest possible time, as soon as we start juggling.
I will be distracted again and repeat the bearded thought: the human brain is unique. And the uniqueness of him is that throughout his life he does not lose the ability to improve. French writer Bernard Verbert said: “A person’s brain wears out when they don’t use it.” The discoveries of recent decades fully confirm this statement. If the nerve cell (neuron) is idle without work, it turns on the mechanism of self-liquidation.
Is it scary? And yes, and no.
The fact is that the total number of neurons in our country is really considerable (approximately 80—100 billion neurons). For comparison, in jellyfish – neurons only 800, in Drosophila – 250,000, in cockroach – 1,000,000, in rat – 200 million, in octopus – 300 million. An equal number of neurons are in a horse and a crow (just over a billion), in a macaque and a giraffe – 1.7 billion neurons each, in a bear – about 10 billion of them. But do not rush to proudly bend your chest, we are by no means champions. The same elephant has 257 billion neurons! And the brain of bottlenose dolphins is much larger than the human brain, and at the same time its neocortex (a new cerebral cortex responsible for higher nervous functions) is much more complex than that of humans. This, according to scientists, gives dolphins self-awareness and the ability to think. By the way, the number of convolutions in dolphins and whales is twice as large, and the language in complexity and linguistic reserve is quite comparable to the human one: 8,000 words in dolphins, and 14,000 in the average person! Agree, not so impressive a difference.
But perhaps it is worth taking a break from the numbers. Moreover, there is still enough mystery and fog in this area. It is now more important for us to understand that we use our seemingly quite promising brain apparatus extremely inefficiently. Actually, one of the hypotheses just claims that human old age comes so early precisely because of the idleness of our brain. And if with the end of schools and institutes, studies for us stop, then only we ourselves are guilty of this. Wise people learn throughout their lives! It is this process that supports our health like nothing else, significantly prolongs youth.
Any new problem tones the brain, and as a developmental task – juggling is ideal. We don’t just throw balls, our brains at this time work with shape, color, weight and variable movement. We are forced to build the most complex neurochips, and the software of these circuits will include all the laws of mechanics we know. Yes, we may not have enough knowledge of physics, do not know anything about ballistics, but the brain working with balls will quite independently fill these gaps. So it should be, since the balls fly not at random, but along predetermined trajectories, and we set these trajectories! Vertical, parabola, ellipse, eight – we chart the movement of the ball, absolutely knowing exactly what height it will fly to, where it will fall – and, therefore, to what place our palm should move in order to confidently catch the ball. In other words, at this time, the most complex software algorithms work in our head, and the neural circuits being built are quite comparable to modern processors.
A small illustration: one ball weighs 160 grams, the second – 170, and the third – 180. Let them throw a robot equipped with manipulators, and all three balls will fly in different orbits, slapping anywhere. To make the necessary correction, taking into account the difference in weight, you will need to make serious changes to the robot program. If the balls differ in color, and the robot tracks them visually, again it is impossible to do without additional programs. I was not too lazy and spent a couple of days trying to find something capable of juggling among digital mechanisms. Didn’t find it. More precisely, I found only an extremely primitive imitation of the simplest and disposable combinations. Of course, the success of scientific and technological progress is foolish to challenge. If humanity sets itself such a goal, the best engineers on the planet will certainly create a robot capable of juggling balls (maybe even clubs!). True, it will take both time and colossal costs. And this is not sarcasm, but just a statement of the amazing fact that our brains are much more powerful than existing computer systems. At least, he copes with the task of teaching juggling more than confidently.
And another significant nuance: juggling is primarily volumetric gymnastics, and volume tasks will always be more difficult than tasks in the plane. It is understandable that this affects the development of the brain. For example, if we compare the number of neurons in the cortex of the hemispheres in mice, rats and moles (representatives of the “flat world”) with the same pigeons, tits, magpies and rooks (inhabitants of celestial volume), then we will have to give the palm to birds. You will be surprised, but the raven will turn out to be smarter than a cat with a dog and at least not dumber than a noble horse! And the Ara parrot in intelligence will leave far behind the bears with lions and even confidently ahead of the huge giraffe! If we talk about the marine element, then this is still the same gigantic volume, requiring the brain of floating creatures to calculate calculations made in three dimensions at once. Perhaps it is for this reason that we observe that mammals living in an aquatic volume (grinds, fin whales, dolphins, orcas) are equal to humans by all formal features! Accordingly, draw conclusions about juggling, doing which, you break out of the plane into the volume…
And now a few words about mirror neurons – the very ones with which the whole animal world is armed and without which no training would be possible.
They were discovered by Italian neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti in the 1990s. A distinctive feature of them lies in the fact that they work not only during some action, but also when we observe the actions of other people. In other words, mirror neurons allow us to “try on” the behavior of another person. Like a network of small mirrors, a neurochain of similar neurons from birth sensitively tracks the volatile