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Lauren McD's picture

Answered Questions

In last week's forum, I questioned the idea of babies having the innate ability to walk and not learning to walk. This week's discussion helped clear my confusion with this counterintuitive idea. Babies are born with the central pattern generator to walk, but they are not born with the abilities to balance, use certain muscles, etc that are necessary for walking. So in a way, learning and maturation are linked into the walking process, making walking an accessed ability. My question of whether or not baby birds would be able to fly if they didn't witness other birds flying was also answered. While specific experiments have not yet been conducted, it is expected that they would still be able to fly. The discussion in class this week helped answer my questions from last week, while also introducing new ideas. I found the phantom limb discussion intriguing, and wonder how anyone could have first thought of its therapy. The discomfort felt is a misalignment of expectations and actual input. This helps explain many common symptoms such as motion sickness, and I'm curious about what other discomforts it can help explain. I appreciate how we are now bridging the gap between neurons and behavior.

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