MisterMMM.com: The driver with two brains!

February 19

I am interested in making the distinction in terms of learning the psychomotor skills of driving.

I have this idea about the motor skills being part of an older section of the brain called the Cerebellum. This part of the brain at the back of the skull attaches to the spinal column and is a neural network. It's not clever, and learns by rote and repetition how to control the body and its movements.

I call this part the "Lizard Brain" because it is a part that in evolutionary terms, we share with reptiles, lizards and dinosaurs!

When this part is trained enough it can actually drive the car on its own, as long as nothing novel happens. I remember driving to my office job years ago and arriving at my desk, sat down. Then it struck me that I couldn't remember if I had cycled or driven into work. I had my car keys with me, so I must have driven but couldn't remember. Then I thought, "Where did I park the car?". Of course, as nothing out of the ordinary had happened, it was parked where I always parked it!

The other part of the brain is unique to higher apes, but especially humans, called the frontal cortex. This part I like to call the "Monkey Brain" and is the "thinking" part of the brain.

So when I teach my drivers, I talk to their "Monkey Brain", so that they can train their "Lizard Brain" to drive. It is always interesting having a new driver who may have been trained to drive many years ago, a decade or more. They have forgotten how to drive, but their body strangely remembers how to do complex things like gear changes and clutch control. And also their steering is unerringly accurate.

There is always a stage to go through, where they are puzzled over who is actually in control of their body. It seems to them as if it changes gear of its own accord, or stops the car when they want to go. This is the past training of the neural network of the Lizard brain, doing the thing that feels right, regardless of what the driver actually wants to do.

Unfortunately, if the training has been done incorrectly, it can take a long time to over-ride the Lizard brain with the new programming. The proverb of not being able to teach an old dog new tricks comes to mind, or maybe never forgetting how to ride a bike.

It's ok, as long as you were taught how to ride it properly in the first place!