Ballerina brains are different
Ballerinas, don’t take offence, but… Your brain is different!!!
Training Taekwondo entails quite a lot of spinning kicks. We’re taught to focus on one spot (e.g. the opponent’s head) and then whip the head around to fix the same spot again. In doing so, dizziness is reduced. The same method is employed by figure skaters and basically anyone needing to turn rapidly without losing balance and falling over.
But here’s the thing with ballerinas - they don’t just whip their head around to fix the same point, they change the structure of their brains!!!
Fluid-filled chambers in the inner ear give us our sense of balance. Cilia (tiny hairs) within the chambers get moved around as the fluid swishes to and fro, allowing us to sense the rotation of the head. The fluid keeps moving after the rotation stops, leading to the perception that we are moving when we’re in fact not. We register this as a sense of dizziness even after the movement has stopped.
Ballerinas can perform multiple pirouettes with little or no feeling of dizziness. This ability has long had scientists stumped.
Until now.
A lot of people think the brain stops developing after childhood. Of course, it doesn’t. It can continue to be trained, and in fact is every day with the things you do. This whole idea of ‘neuroplasticity’ (the changing of the brain) was actually first put forth way back in 1890.
It has recently been found that years of (let’s face it, incredibly intense) training actually causes structural changes in a ballerina’s brain that help them stay balanced whilst performing multiple pirouettes.
Body movement is controlled in the brain by the cerebellum. Brain scans of professional ballerinas revealed the part of the cerebellum that processes the signal from the balancing organs of the inner ear was smaller than normal. The part of the cerebellum responsible for the perception of dizziness was also different from the normal brain of you and I.
So basically, ballerina brains adapt over years of training to suppress the whole sensation of dizziness, allowing them to continue dancing after spinning around in multiple pirouettes and complete a performance without losing their balance.
Go ballerinas!