Ice Skating and the Brain (NYT interactive article)

[el henry]

Not sure I understand the medical terminology, but I tried. The stylized photos make me dizzy.

Gifted article:

Ice Skating and the Brain

How do champion skaters accomplish their extraordinary jumps and spins? Brain science is uncovering clues.

www.nytimes.com

 

[midori green]

I skated from 4th grade through the end of high school. In college, I took a biology lab class where we did a spinning experiment. Someone sat on a spinny chair and was spun around fast. That makes their eyes "twitch" side to side, and you can still see the eyes twitching for awhile after the chair stopped spinning. When I was i the chair, I could feel my eyes twitching during the spinning, but they stopped as soon as the chair stopped spinning. This article reinforces what I suspected...that my brain was somehow conditioned to stop "spinning". It was extra interesting, because it had been three years since I was a skater. (Twenty years later, resuming as an adult...my first scratch spin left me slightly nauseous for the rest of the afternoon...haha.)

 

[Mathman]

Most people (ballet dancers, for instance) reduce the feeling of dizziness by "spotting." Evidently snapping the head around and focussing on the next spot helps to mitigate the confusion coming to the brain from the inner ear. Figure skaters somehow train themseves to spin without spotting, yet without getting dizzy.

The only top skater who spotted, as far as I know, was Kevin Van Der Perren -- this slowed him down a tad and made it harder to get in the rotations in a jump. Although he did have a quad and in fact was the first skater to do a 4-3-3 combination. I don't know about his spins.

Interesting that Michelle Kwan was mentioned. Michelle was not a fast spinner (nor a very flexible one), and as for spinning in both directions, this didn't really work out for her and she dropped it from her programs after a couole of seasons.

Sychonized swimmers can literally hold their breath until they pass out (bratty children may threaten to do this, but they can't, really) ) Sword swallowers can suppress the gag reflex. Fascinating study.

 

[Weathergal]

Most people (ballet dancers, for instance) reduce the feeling of dizziness by "spotting." Evidently snapping the head around and focussing on the next spot helps to mitigate the confusion coming to the brain from the inner ear. Figure skaters somehow train themseves to spin without spotting, yet without getting dizzy.

The only top skater who spotted, as far as I know, was Kevin Van Der Perren -- this slowed him down a tad and made it harder to get in the rotations in a jump. Although he did have a quad and in fact was the first skater to do a 4-3-3 combination. I don't know about his spins.

Interesting that Michelle Kwan was mentioned. Michelle was not a fast spinner (nor a very flexible one), and as for spinning in both directions, this didn't really work out for her and she dropped it from her programs after a couole of seasons.

Sychonized swimmers can literally hold their breath until they pass out (bratty children may threaten to do this, but they can't, really) ) Sword swallowers can suppress the gag reflex. Fascinating study.

I think Kevin spotted during spins as well, but I'm not 100% sure.