The Rough Guide to Psychology An Introduction to Human Behaviour and the Mind (Rough Guides)

YOUR SENSE OF THE WORLD AND MOVEMENT WITHIN IT

Another way that transmission delays are overcome is by delegating
control of many movements to automatic systems. In fact, all of our
motor control is really a delicate balance between our internally
generated, “wilful” control and reflexive, environmentally triggered
movements. We take this for granted most of the time, but there is at
least one situation where your brain’s autopilot can be made suddenly
noticeable. It’s been dubbed the broken-escalator phenomenon and it

Man doing forward gymnastics flip. Illustration from Eadweard Muybridge’s

Animal Locomotion (1887).

In front of the strip

of tissue containing

a sensory map of the

body is a second strip,

the “primary motor

cortex”, in which

distinct areas are

responsible for sending

commands to different

body parts. Other

cortical regions involved

in motor control are

also shown.