Why Humming Works

[Poetic Justice]

I was watching a programme about the development of AI a few days ago and something interesting happened. The presenter was demonstrating how hard it is for humans to learn to walk across a thin balance beam and therefore how hard it would be for a robot to do. He was being taught by some cicrus performers and spent hours trying to do it to no avail. It was then suggested that he hum a tune as he tried again. Lo and behold, it worked and he did it first time whilst humming.

He didn't understand why this worked and neither did the performers. They just knew that it did

I would like to explain what is going on here.

Imagine your brain and body is an organisation or a company. This company has lots of employees including a chief executive, a receptionist, a finance officer and so on. Each of these employees is brilliant at their job and only their job. The company hires a consultant to help advise with new situations. This consultant is your conscious mind. The only job he is good at is advising on new situations. he is rubbish at the receptionists job, he is rubbish at the finance officers job. In fact he is rubbish at everything except advising on new situations.

Left to his own devices this consultant will interfere with everyone elses roles. He tells the lungs how to breath, he tells the feet how to walk, he tells the arms how to stay straight. Remember he is rubbish at everything except advising on new situations. Nobody can get any work done. They are being micro managed by some idiot that doesn't even know what he is doing.

The chief executive comes up with a solution to this. He sticks the consultant in a room on his own and tells him to sing a song. Whils he is singing his song he can no longer micro manage. The lungs can now breath more effectively, the feet can walk better, the arms can now stay straight. He can walk across the beam.

Your conscious mind is too stupid to walk across a beam. It isn't fast enough. There are too many sublte changes in balance to be made too quickly for him to keep up

Your subconsious mind finds it quite easy

 

[linger]

I like the explanation. )

Is that sort of the same reason, do you think, that people with stutters and other speech challenges can often sing clearly?

It's also terribly interesting as someone who's in the process of learning to walk again. There's a fine line between thinking about how you want your legs to move and not focusing on them so much that they get confused and don't work. There's a lot of "you know how to do this on your own, I don't need to tell you" -- I'm going to try humming today while I'm moving around.

 

[Poetic Justice]

I don't know about the stutter thing but my gut says that there is something different going on there

As for learning to walk again, it's worth a shot

Good luck

 

[LittleElf]

This is is very interesting, I wonder what other uses there could be.

 

[Poetic Justice]

This is is very interesting, I wonder what other uses there could be.

It's worth trying with anything that requires muscle memory to do.

Of course, at first you should absolutely listen to the consultant.

Once he has given all the advice you think he can, get him out of the way so everyone else can get some work done.

 

[Soulful]

I find this interesting, and I think it makes sense for some people but I don't know if this would work for me in this instance. I feel that success, for me, would mean I would have to focus on walking straight and keeping my balance in order to not fall off because I don't have the best sense of coordination. Sometimes the mind does get in the way, but in my own experience I can get distracted if I'm doing something else with my mind. What happens then is that if my body is left to its own devices, my non-athleticism can take over, or even simply physical habits which might include uneven gait, poor bodily mechanics, etc. On the other hand, if the activity was something very scary and entailed physical danger, then I can see how humming would help.

 

[Poetic Justice]

I find this interesting, and I think it makes sense for some people but I don't know if this would work for me in this instance. I feel that success, for me, would mean I would have to focus on walking straight and keeping my balance in order to not fall off because I don't have the best sense of coordination. Sometimes the mind does get in the way, but in my own experience I can get distracted if I'm doing something else with my mind. What happens then is that if my body is left to its own devices, my non-athleticism can take over, or even simply physical habits which might include uneven gait, poor bodily mechanics, etc. On the other hand, if the activity was something very scary and entailed physical danger, then I can see how humming would help.

Your consultant hasn't finished consulting yet. keep listening to him for now

I'm certainly not saying that humming makes you better at anything physical. That would just be ridiculous.

There are probably several other situations other than beam walking that it works for though

Perhaps if several people try it in different situations and post what happens we can define what makes this work a bit better than my easily understood but very vague metaphor

@porcelinapunk I'd be really interested to hear if you got round to trying it and what happened

 

[linger]

I was a lot more deliberate in my experimentation today, but I'm still not sure. I think, overall, it does help, especially when my foot gets "stuck" sometimes and it seems impossible to move. I did notice that singing a song quietly worked a bit better than humming, but I think that might be because my fifth wheel seemed to know it was being sidetracked with the humming sometimes and the humming became the "automatic pilot."

There are definitely still times where my leg doesn't seem to care about anything I try whether it's singing or humming.

I'm going to keep experimenting and try to figure out a little more about what's going on. I'll keep y'all posted )

 

[JGirl]

i think this is really cool, but i have to admit that i want to hurt people who hum absentmindedly.
oh yes there are hummers about, and they are everywhere. they are second only to the whistlers.

 

[Rferraris]

I absolutely thought this would be about a very different conversation. But humming is a talent some do better than others.

 

[James]

I thought this was a great explanation, I've worked with some managers who could really benefit from it. I think in this case its possibly the different hemispheres of the brain. The right side that is used in music or humming may well cope better than the left "factual" side where the subconscious learned balance of normal walking maybe dominant. Maybe the humming gives the right side temporary dominance. Some people are naturally right side dominant but the majority are left dominant.

 

[Poetic Justice]

I thought this was a great explanation, I've worked with some managers who could really benefit from it. I think in this case its possibly the different hemispheres of the brain. The right side that is used in music or humming may well cope better than the left "factual" side where the subconscious learned balance of normal walking maybe dominant. Maybe the humming gives the right side temporary dominance. Some people are naturally right side dominant but the majority are left dominant.

There are several differences between the left and right hemisphere. The left is more language and logic based whilst the right is more intuitive and creative based. Walking in auto pilot which is really what this is about is definately a right hemisphere thing.

If you're saying to yourself "move this foot like this and move your arms like that" then you are setting your left hemisphere to the task of walking. If your left hemisphere is busy doing something else then your right hemisphere auto pilot takes over.

And yes, I know it's not that simple but it'll do for our purposes

Has anyone ever noticed that if you're walking down the street and you realise someone is watching you, you suddenly become aware of how you're walking and it feels kind of awkward? It's the same thing

Something else I think this could work for is juggling. If there is anyone reading this who can sort of juggle but isn't particularly good at it then I think that would be an ideal test

 

[linger]

Has anyone ever noticed that if you're walking down the street and you realise someone is watching you, you suddenly become aware of how you're walking and it feels kind of awkward? It's the same thing

That was true before and it's even more true now. I yell at people for watching me walk because it makes it even harder.

Bah! I love it when things make sense!

 

[Poetic Justice]

[MENTION=5824]porcelinapunk[/MENTION] I'd be real interested to hear if you have noticed any improvement since (presumably) trying this

 

[linger]

It does tend to work, although I think that I've realized part of it for me is getting/keeping a rhythm to walk to. I think it's still sort of the same principle though--it gets me away from over thinking and into the land of just doing.

 

[Poetic Justice]

Awesome. Obviously this isn't the only possible "good" way of thinking about it but it's nice to hear it's had a practical benefit to someone

Thanks for the feedback