The claims being made by UM are a load of Crock;
Thinking, Walking, Talking: Integratory Motor and Cognitive Brain Function
''Both cognitive and motor function are controlled by brain areas such as frontal lobes, cerebellum, and basal ganglia that collectively interact to exert governance and control over executive function and intentionality of movements that require anticipation and the prediction of movement of others. Developmental disorders and other disorders of brain integration all involve disruption of executive processes, functions attributable to the frontal lobes, and articulation with motor components of the nervous system (4, 8, 19). A common symptom of developmental disabilities, for example, includes clumsiness or motor incoordination, especially as it relates to gait and posture and with strong evidence supporting the concept of “weak central coherence” or a processing bias for featural and local information, and relative failure to extract gist or “see the big picture” in everyday life [for a fuller description, the reader is referred to Ref. (20)].
Impulse control disorders, both inhibitive and facilitative, as well as disorders of executive function and judgment, either inhibited or facilitated, and judgment disorders can all be attributed to dysfunction of this network and its control of motor and non-motor cognitive behavior. In the following sections, we will discuss examples for the interactions between cognitive and motor functions.''
How brain performs 'motor chunking' tasks
The rhythm is the human brain taking information and processing it in an efficient way, according to Wymbs. "On one level, the brain is going to try to divide up, or parse, long sequences of movement," he said. "This parsing process functions to group or cluster movements in the most efficient way possible."
But it is also in our brain's best interest to assemble single or short strings of movements into longer, integrated sequences so that a complex behavior can be made with as little effort as possible. "The motor system in the brain wants to output movement in the most computational, low-cost way as possible," Wymbs said. "With this integrative process, it's going to try to bind as many individual motor movements into a fluid, uniform movement as it possibly can."
The two processes are at odds with each other, and it's how the brain reconciles this struggle during motor learning that intrigues Wymbs and the study's other authors, including Scott Grafton, professor of psychology and director of the UCSB Brain Imaging Center. "What we are interested in is functional plasticity of the brain -- how the brain changes when we learn actions, or motor sequences as we refer to them in this paper," Wymbs said.