Mastering New Movements

Playing tennis is not an inborn skill. There is no innate stimulus-response wiring in the brain for a killer backhand. And yet humans learn to master the sport, and so many other new types of movement, over both short and long time spans. Rui Costa, PhD, an incoming principal investigator at Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, wants to know how we build up such a stunning repertoire of behavior and continue to expand upon it throughout our lives. Read the full article