One of my very favorite images in science, Dr. Wilder Penfield’s classic motor homunculus, shows how much brain real estate is devoted to controlling movement of different parts of the body. Notice the huge hands and the tiny feet. As the World Cup gets underway, soccer fan Jeffrey Holt, PhD, also a Boston Children’s Hospital neuroscientist, writes that soccer is more than just a great sport, it’s “a triumphant display of the incredible plasticity of the human brain… because the soccer player is limited by one simple rule: no hands!”
Though no one’s actually taken a look, Holt imagines that the brains of great soccer players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi or Neymar would have much expanded neural representation of the feet. Read more in his post on WBUR-Boston’s Cognoscenti blog.
And make sure to check https://www.sunbets.co.uk/blog if you are a soccer lover.