Mirror learning - need help googling

[dreamshark]

I continue to try to find information online on the most efficient way to mirror motor skills learned on one side of the body to the other side. I have a particularly difficult time with this, and I'm hoping that somebody has been studying it scientifically with some of the new tools now available for tracking brain activity. The tricky thing is figuring out how to search for it.

After a little googling I've discovered that I can turn up abstracts of scientific work in this area with phrases like this:

• left right motor
• Transfer of learning motor non-dominant

Unfortunately, scientific papers on this topic tend to be the sort of study that just states the obvious (yes indeed, once a task has been learned with one hand it can be learned faster with the other hand) or obfuscates whatever they were doing with phraseology like this:  "It has been suggested that the learning of new dynamics occurs in intrinsic coordinates. However, it has also been suggested that elements that encode hand velocity, and hence act in an extrinsic frame of reference, play a role in the acquisition of dynamics."

So far the most useful article I found was in a juggler's personal journal entry, musing on the same kinds of things I have been thinking about and relating his own experiences. He hadn't gotten as far as I have with it, however. 

I'm really more interested in practical applications. It seems like this topic would be of intense interest to two groups in particular: trainers that work with elite athletes and physical therapists working with people with brain damage. Personally, I feel closer to the second group. Advice like, "Just keep practicing" has been very unhelpful when it comes to bringing my weak side up to speed with my strong side. There has to be more information on this. Can any of you unleash your wizard skills at data mining and help me find what I'm looking for?
 

Comments

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Hmm. This is interesting. If I understand this correctly, brain activity when learning with the non-dominant hand is fundamentally different than it is when learning with the dominant hand, not just reversed:

Learning with the left hand also recruited a widespread set of temporal and frontal regions, suggesting that motor skill learning with the nondominant hand develops within both cognitive and motor-related functional networks.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I think people are overstating the kinesthetic differences. They do indeed exist (as I've said many times, food tastes different eating with my left hand than with my right) but I can still use a fork (or chopsticks) left handed. After practice.

The times I've had to map a right-handed action to my left hand, I've mostly done it by simply thinking of it as an action of the opposite hand. You cover this this as "obvious". Well, yeah.

As to searching: Without actually trying it myself, I would recommend checking rehab procedures for people who have lost one hand/arm. My brother Dan probably knows something about this.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"Hmm... I think people are overstating the kinesthetic differences."

People are overstating what kinesthetic differences? Are you responding to a particular article? If you are referring to me, what can I say? When I learn a skill with one hand I can NOT simply repeat it with my other hand. Some people (such as you) seem to be able to do this quite easily. I am close to the other end of the spectrum. So I am looking for specific techniques to facilitate the bilateral transfer of skills. I'm tired of starting over from scratch and spending as much time learning a skill on the left side as I spent learning it on the right.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

You might also try books for dancers.

On mirroring skills: I'm lefthanded. When I got a lefthanded can opener as a present, I found it very hard to use. Much, much harder than using a righthanded can opener.