Posted: August 9th, 2022

Learning How to Ride a Bike

Learning How to Ride a Bike
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Learning How to Ride a Bike
The Backwards Brain Bicycle video presents an intriguing practical example of neuroplasticity (our brains’ ability to modify themselves, to alter neural pathways). In the experiment, Destin Sandlin acknowledges that he learned how to ride a bicycle when he was a child, and an archival video shows him riding a 2-wheeler like a boss. Many years later, as an adult, when a welder friend challenged him to ride a bike whose handlebar/front wheel correspondence had been tweaked, he could not ride it. When the handlebars of the backwards bike are turned to the left, the wheel heads to the right direction, and if it is steered to the right, the front wheel points left (Sandlin, 2015). This experiment highlights the fact that knowing how to ride a normal bicycle in the traditional fashion is very different from grasping the intricate algorithm associated with keeping one upright, a synchronized ballet of balance, downward force, procession, and steering.
In this video we see that when the brain is used to operating in a particular way, it becomes difficult for it to register something different. Therefore, riding a bike in reverse is hard because the brain has to first unlearn the complex process involved in riding a bike in the conventional way. It then has to relearn and register the new way of operating and riding a “backwards bike.” In short, how to ride a backwards bike needs a complete rewiring of the neural pathways linked to bike riding. This takes quite a while rather than instantly. For Sandlin, it took a whole 8 months to learn how to ride a bike when the reverse actions are required.

Reference
Sandlin, D. (2015, April 25). The Backwards Brain Bicycle – Smarter Every Day 133. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

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