Marta Gonzalez, the Ballerina

My response to the post:

Just amazing!!! 5% of our thoughts are conscious and 95% are subconscious. The reactions that we just saw from her is simply “habits”.

I looked back on my notes and found this quote:

“We are more bundles of habits, imitators and copies of our past selves. Habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.” 

– William James, The Laws of Habits, 1899

Remember the Striatum? (PUTA-men and COW-date? Actually Putamen & Caudate, excuse me for my French). It is the center for our habits. It acts like an automatic transmission. It is connected to the motor strip. I have an 75 year old patient with severe Alzheimer’s who got lost in the neighborhood but was able to track back himself to his house.

When I was still in Tondo, there was a kutsero (horse-driven coach driver) who claimed that in the street, he could sleep in his kalesa (coach) and his horse could navigate himself back to the horse stable from Luneta to Raxabago, Tondo (a distance of about 3-4 miles). It is all about habits! All animals have it.

Marta Gonzalez, the old ballerina, is just exhibiting her old neuronal wirings for dancing that has been recorded in her striatum for many years . The music, was the cue to generate the routine and the reward, the cycle of habits.

Do you know the the reason why we can not avoid eating the bad stuff and unable to get off the couch and do exercise? It’s all about old habits.

Happy Thanksgiving!

(Reminder about the food stuff and habits…)

What really amazes me is her brain showing the power of the the old habits more than the power of music. If you run Mozart’s Sonata No. 11, I think her response would be different.

From: R. De La Rosa, MD, Nov. 26, 2020