[AlecSchueler]

Since what year?

Not asking sarcastically, just curious when schools started moving forwards with these things. The decentralised nature of thinking is something that's only been presented to me with a biological basis in the past few years. Would love to know who was agead of the curve, how so, and why!

[im3w1l]

In my country there is a fairly common expression "det sitter i ryggmärgen" literally "it's in the spinal cord" which means that you have practiced something a whole lot and know it by heart. The implication being that the spinal cord can do the task on its own without involving the brain. It's so common that it wouldn't surprise me if 1st grade teachers used it without even reflecting on the literal meaning.

Now whether the spinal cord actually can learn motor skills seems to be a bit of an open question, but it can perform some instinctive tasks like shying away from painful stimuli.

[andrei_says_]

Love that expression.

There’s a book, The Talent Code. One of the central premises is neuroplasticity and more precisely the process of muslin “wrapping” certain neuropathways making them more efficient.

This happens all the time - for connections deemed by the brain as important. While demoting “unimportant” ones.

So yes, the brain undergoes constant change - iterating on continuous improvement.

Intentional practice activates this process.

This, what we call “talent”, more often than not, is the result of intentional practice.

[andrei_says_]

Mialin, not muslin obviously.

[Retric]

It’s been in some high school US textbooks at least as far back as the 1990’s and I suspect it’s much older. But the implication of such didn’t get much attention. I vaguely recall one of those little blue box blurbs with a mention of headless chickens being able to run and a diagram of a reflex test.

[KineticLensman]

The knee-jerk effect was documented in the 19th century [0]. I was certainly aware of it when I was young (1970s) although I can't remember whether it was explicitly taught at school, either the effect or the underlying cause.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patellar_reflex#History

[yencabulator]

What part of that implies the signal does not go all the way to the brain before the reflex happens?

[brianpan]

I learned about the reflex arc in the early 1980's via Charlie Brown's "Questions and Answers" series.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown%27s_Super_Book_o...

It wasn't named, but it was presented as "if you accidentally touched a hot stove, your reflexes would move your hand before you felt the pain because the round trip to your spine is a shorter path." Which thinking about it now, doesn't quite make sense as an explanation because one is a round trip and the other is not, but oh well. There was an accompanying picture showing a round trip to the base of the skull/top of the spine (not the middle of the spine like the picture in wikipedia).

I did not learn about this in school, but it was apparently accepted enough to put into a children's "encyclopedia".

[zeusk]

I attended high school in India around 2008, they had a good three chapters on CNS (incl. how reflexive actions can be routed within the spinal cord).

[menzoic]

In the US I learned about CNF in 2006 and a lot of related things such as specialization of different brain areas and the stomach having sort of a brain that affects you emotionally

[fnordpiglet]

We learned about this in 6th grade biology in the late 1980’s.

[konschubert]

It was part of the German curriculum in the early 2000s.

[xattt]

Was learning this in Ontario in the early 2000s.