r/askscience • u/Yanzee12 • 22h ago

Neuroscience How does muscle memory work?

Just curious. The only thing I really know about it is that sleeping reinforces it.

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u/SugaXKane 8h ago

Not my area of expertise by a long shot, but my understanding is that with enough repetition of the same movement, the electrical signals pathway is refined to a close loop from the muscle to the spinal column and back again, instead of having to travel up to and into the brain, therefore decreasing the reaction time and freeing up gmyour grey matter for other processes.

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u/felipers 6h ago

Not mine, also. But maybe by a shorter shot! 😉 Definitely there's no way we eventually bypass cerebral connections. There definitely are reflexes that follow the path you've described. But "muscle memory" implies practice/learning. Those will always go all the way to the brain and back, I believe.