Tool Use Is Just a Trick of the Mind

[rayofreason]

Don't take that hammer for granted. Using tools may seem like second nature, but only a few animals can master the coordination and mental sophistication required. So how did primates learn to use tools in the first place? A new study in monkeys suggests that the brain's trick is to treat tools as just another body part.

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/128/2

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Did you hear the story on NPR this morning about the brain

making up music in the long term absence of sound?

[rwenos]

2. From Norm Abrams?

You're referring to The New Yankee Workshop, right?

I often tell friends I worship a Jewish carpenter. They don't get it, usually.

[tinrobot]

3. I wonder if it works for computer based tools as well.

Sometimes it seems like Photoshop can become another body part.

[diane in sf]

4. I've got a lot of "muscle memory" in my hands when I do Photoshop. It's

like learning dance routines. I teach Photoshop and related things and when I explain things to my students I have to have the mouse in my hand to retrieve my memory of operational sequences.


edit: typo

[frogmarch]

5. Interesting.

I think playing musical instruments applies here too. It took a lot of practice, but now mine seem as if they're part of me.

[hunter]

6. Most of who I am is expressed through my tools.

The only exception is my writing, and maybe that's also a sort of tool. I write with my fingers, and the way I speak doesn't seem to have much in common with the way I write.

But certainly, most of the tools I commonly use are just "part of me."

[caraher]

7. Ever hear pilots talking about "strapping on" their planes?

Probably no coincidence that so often the device as an extension of the person seems most natural...