Are You In Charge of Your Own Body?

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Can you roll your eyes clockwise while you spin your head counter-clockwise? No, there’s no reason why you’d want to do that, but still, doesn’t it annoy you when you bump into limitations about what your brain is able to tell your body to do? Or try to make clockwise circles with your right foot and anti-clockwise circles with your right hand at the same time.
Here’s a third one for you: start with both hands flat and extended with the palms facing outwards, at eye level. With your left hand, part and join your fingers two by two (think of the Vulcan salute), while with your right hand you keep the two middle fingers joined and move the outer ones apart. Then alternate movements (the Vulcan salute goes from left hand to right hand and back). And keep your thumb in control at all times too (no "but nobody told me what to do" frantic moves, ok?)
Of course if you’re not even able to move your hears or scalp (yes, there are muscles on top of your head too), you’re just not in charge of your own body. Playing musical instruments and sports are probably good tools to train and start taking control, but I wonder how easy it is to do as an adult. Sometimes we don’t even have the map to our own muscles (i.e. where is the switch to change our heart rate?)
Update: how funny that just two minutes after I post this, I find this article in my RSS article pool: NASA scientist honored for mind-over-body research.

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