This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: When an athlete swings upside down atop a 7-meter (23-foot) pendulum, it may seem like a feat of strength, courage or technique. A new study suggests it is something more fundamental: a striking demonstration of how intelligence emerges from the interaction of brain, body and environment.
In a paper published in the Journal of Nonlinear Science, Harvard researchers use mathematics, physics and control theory to analyze kiiking, an extreme sport invented in Estonia in which athletes pump a giant swing until they complete a full rotation. At one level, the problem appears straightforward. The athlete repeatedly stands and squats to inject energy into the swing.
Yet this simple action inspires a question that reaches far beyond sport, touching neuroscience, robotics, biology and human performance: How does an organism learn to exploit the dynamics of its environment to achieve a goal? "The athlete is not imposing motion on the world," said L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Physics, and senior author of the study.
"Instead, the athlete is learning to cooperate with the world's dynamics." For decades, scientists viewed movement as a command-and-control problem in which the brain computes movement and the body executes it. Modern theories of embodied cognition instead suggest that behavior emerges from the interaction of neural control, biophysics and the physical environment. Kiiking offers an unusually clean example of this principle.
The athlete's objective is simple: invert the swing. Yet success depends on understanding, either consciously or intuitively, the natural dynamics of an active pendulum many times taller than the athlete. The athlete cannot simply generate more force.
Energy must be supplied in the right amount at precisely the right moments. Too early or too late, and the effort is largely wasted. Every child who learns to pump a playground swing discovers this principle through trial and error: Some movements amplify the motion while others do not.
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