What hitting a fastball tells us about the brain

I'm not sure what to make of this seemingly correct fact, but I find it so interesting, I feel that it must have some deep significance to those of us who aren't professional baseball players.

In the course of rereading a chapter in Robert Burton's book, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not, I came across his analysis of baseball pitchers and hitters in the "When Does a Thought Begin?" chapter.

Here's the crux of the issue:

Professional baseball pitchers throw with velocities in the range of 80 to 100 miles per hour. Elapsed time from the moment of release to the ball crossing home plate ranges from approximately 380 to 460 milliseconds.

Minimum reaction time -- from the instant the image of the ball's release reaches the retina to the initiation of the swing -- is approximately 200 milliseconds. The swing takes another 160 to 190 milliseconds.

The combination of reaction and swing time approximately equals the time it takes for a fastball to travel from the pitcher's mound to home plate.

So how is a batter ever able to hit the baseball?

It can't be by following the path of the ball with their eyes, deciding it is a hittable pitch, and then swinging their bat at the ball. Physics and human biology don't allow for that. Burton explains what actually happens.

Once the ball is in flight, it is too late for detailed deliberation. The batter sees the release and the beginning of its path, and then goes on automatic pilot. Sounds suspiciously like an inner machine at the helm, some robotic neuronal clumps that are responsible for a hitter like Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds.

Yet we all know that a hitter's skill, beyond mere athleticism, is dependent upon prior practice and extensive study of the game. Great hitters keep extensive notes on the tendencies of opposing pitchers, including what type of pitch and where it will be thrown in various conditions.

A 3-0 pitch with the bases loaded is more likely to be down the middle than a 0-2 pitch with the bases empty. The combination of circumstances is infinite, yet each hitter develops a probabilistic profile of the speed, trajectory, and location of the next pitch. It is in this realm that great players have a greater accuracy than novice players.

The act of hitting the ball involves two fundamentally different strategies inextricably linked together -- conscious analysis prior to the event, and reliance upon nearly instantaneous subconscious calculations at the onset of the event.

The cortex sets out general guidelines for when to swing and where, then hands the controls over to quicker subcortical mechanisms. 

A simplified schema provided by a computer scientist-engineer after extensive study of the physics of a pitch:

"We divide the pitch into thirds. During the first third the batter gathers sensory data; during the middle third he does computations (predicting where and when the ball will collide with his bat); during the last third he is swinging. During the swing he could close his eyes and it would not make any difference. He can't alter the swing. The most he can do is check the swing." (Italics mine.)

Lastly, Burton explains why an onlooker thinks the batter should have been able to do better with a pitch, and how conversation is a lot like pitching a fastball and trying to hit a fastball.

To further complicate the problem of the timing of perception, consider how different the approaching baseball looks to the batter and to you, an observer sitting behind home plate. The pitcher fires three successive ninety-five-miles-per-hour blazers.

The batter whiffs the first and fouls off the next two. He prepares himself for another smoker. Instead, the pitcher lobs a deceptive sixty-five-miles-per-hour change-up. The batter swings far too early and strikes out. You watch in amusement and ask yourself how the batter can make five million a year and so misjudge a ball that, to your uninvolved eye, a Little Leaguer could hit.

The difference is that while the batter's decision to swing begins prior to his full conscious appreciation that the pitcher has thrown a slow pitch, you have the luxury to see the ball's entire path toward the plate. By not being forced to immediately decide whether or not to swing, you see a batter being badly fooled by a pitch that doesn't fool you.

The basic neurobiological principle is that the need for an immediate response time reduces the accuracy of perception of incoming information. Though most of aren't involved in high-speed sports, we all experience these limitations in the most crucial of daily activities -- normal conversation.

In fact, conversation is as much a high-speed competition as a top-flight table tennis match. 

First, consider the act of listening. We are bombarded with the rapid presentation of individual phonemes strung together to make words, phrases, and sentences. Processing takes time. A word may not be initially decipherable; only with further speech is it clarified.

...Now visualize conversation as a means for the exchange of complex ideas with each participant's response dependent on whether or not he believes the idea is correct. Instead of throwing a fastball, each discussant is throwing an idea at the other. 

If the listener judges the idea as correct, he will not swing (he will accept the idea as is). If he thinks the approaching idea is incorrect, he will swing (formulate an immediate rebuttal and/or interrupt the speaker to interject his correction).

Here's the windup, and here's the thought. The listener's decision as to the thought's correctness will be based upon a quick glimpse of the idea leaving the other's lips, snap judgements of body language, sighs, gestures, facial expressions, and all the various verbal and nonverbal contributions to interpretation of the spoken word. 

If the listener is forced to make a quick response, the decision as to the thought's correctness will be subject to the same physiological restraints as a batter's assessment of an incoming pitch.

...How different conversation sounds when we don't feel obliged to respond. As uninvolved spectators luxuriating in our more leisurely processing time, we easily see the shallowness, evasiveness, and lack of real exchange of ideas in most dialogue.

...Sadly, the problem is at least in part a matter of the physiology of conversation. As we move from silent observer to active discussant, we become mired in the very processing problem we're trying to overcome.

Comments

[Appreciative Reader]

This is all fascinating.

And so counter-intuitive! I mean, one groks the concept of the brain furnishing us with a model of reality that we operate with, rather than apprehending reality directly. That idea's something one understands, and has internalized. But when it comes to this kind of direct application of the principle, it's ...weird. I mean, we've all of us, or most of us, been out there playing, faced the ball coming at us, and what we respond to is the ball actually whizzing at us, that we hit out at, or try to. And here, apparently, we're being told that it's merely a model that we're seeing, not the ball itself, because the time elapsed simply doesn't allow for us to have seen the ball?

Fascinating. Worth reading up more on.

That's the thing with information. It is so very easy to access today, at a superficial level at any rate even if not necessarily at expert level, that we have no one else but ourselves to blame if we don't stay more or less updated on major developments in science, as well as adopt a worldview in keeping with what science is telling us. On the other hand, there's so much to see and hear and know (even if all of that is fairly easily accessible), and there seemingly is so little time, that invariably there remains such a great deal of reading that stays on as good intentions, unrealized. Like take neuroscience. I've been meaning, for some time now, to do some serious reading on it --- not just short popular articles, but some actual books written by bona fide scientists, albeit I suppose necessarily dumbed down for a lay audience. And somehow I never ever seem to find time, never ever seem to get started.

Which is why I continue to remain in awe of the prodigious amount of reading you seem to put in, Brian, not merely in isolated spurts but day in and day out, consistently. And why I'm grateful that you keep sharing your insights and/or curated excerpts here. Given that your interests seem to overlap so closely with mine, it lets me get in some reading vicariously as it were, on some of the stuff that I should be reading up myself but somehow never seem to actually end up doing.

[Spence Tepper]

Hm.. Way too much decision making in his model, and poor use of the several channels and stages of intelligence in the brain and the senses

I think his hypothesis relies too heavily on too many decisions in sequence.

A better model is the one confirmed for chess masters.

They identify known visual patterns, recognizable patterns or profiles nearly instantly among the pieces, using conditioned visual templates. Behind these is a history of moves and counter moves... Ie, prior conditioning reduces their executive decision making by making increasing use of pattern recognition.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28265652/

Applied to the batter and pitcher, they have a deck of visual templates for stance and movement from past experience, and let visual recognition match this, reducing their decision making to accept and respond, or reject and resort, much of that already conditioned. All they need do consciousnessly is make sure they are focused to see what their opponent is doing. They let the other sensory intelligences do their work, clearing the deck of all other stimuli.

And then, executive thinking is reduced to a short list of patterned responses to pick from.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-study-shows-grandma/

This actually allows nearly parallel processing of individual decisions to line up action, which provides time for several adjustment decisions before execution.

Athletes also function in a similar way, "relying on their training".

But how does it happen so fast with such a slow brain?

Still a mystery.

[Dungeness]

@ Spence : [ But how does it happen so fast with such a slow brain?]

I suspect for a hitter in the "Bigs", it goes kinda like this:

I wonder what that sonnavab#### is gonna throw... fastball...cut or 4-seam?
Nah, slider maybe. No, he's thrown a couple already, not this time. Change-
up? Curve? Fork? Damn, he's winding up... he's got a mean look on his
face too. Oh no, what if it's a brushback! Goodbye, cruel world. Alright,
alright... shut down, brain! Think Zen, think Zen!

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Dungeness!

I think you got it. No thinking at all! Just do!

[Sonya]

Sounds like witchcraft.

[Dungeness]

@ Sonya : [ Sounds like witchcraft. ]

IMO, it's even simpler and faster than witchcraft . An experienced athlete
has seen droves of windups, pitches, batting stances, or picked up on the
little quirks and patterns revealed by players. His intuition filters out a few
likelihoods matching what he's observed in the past and then fine-tunes
as he sees more. It's magically fast.

But, if no recognition is triggered or he loses focus and starts to slowly,
laboriously think about it, then he'll wonder, guess, get flustered at the
imagery of 95 mph fastball whistling under his chin. Or he may even
conjure up a conspiracy theory about someone putting a hex on him.

In the end, he becomes a "deer caught in the headlights" just hoping
the brain will "go Zen" in time.

[Ron E.]

It’s good to be reminded of the brain’s amazing abilities, even if it is in the context of baseball which I know little about. And Spence repeats a similar model with chess. Either way, I am always in awe of the brain’s ability to direct the entire human system, much of which happens without our being aware of its processes.

The brain (as the ultimate survival aid) functions continually, regulating the bodies organs without our knowing it – even when we are asleep. The only time the brain ceases its activity and shuts down is at death.

The mental functioning of the brain (the mind) is a slightly different matter. Although memory and thought continually arise from the brain, such mind activity can – not exactly shut down – but through meditation practice, be slowed down to the degree that it can be observed in action. This (meditators describe) has the effect of seeing thought arise allowing the opportunity to not engage with it, as is our usual pattern.

[777]

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we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

-

777

[Hiho silver]

we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

👍✌️Ego can't stand criticism its the greatest barrier to freedom

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Hiho Silver and 777
You wrote
we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

👍✌️Ego can't stand criticism its the greatest barrier to freedom

I bathe in criticism daily. It's a great humbler.
But I have an inner source of strength to turn to.
As Dungeness points out, so long as the "intuitive" pipeline is clean and open, and we maintain focus on it, all goes well. Life is then a series of miracles. We're going 10,000 kmh with a brain that actually on its own can't get past 300 kmh.

But when we lose that connection, when we don't heed the advice of our Father, Daedalus, then all the pieces that were beautifully aligned get fractured into a million tiny pieces on the ground, and Icarus stumble down to the earth, wings aflame, and is confounded, powerless, ground to a standstill, and once more without Life.

What the intuition can accomplish, the brain cannot comprehend. Yet that intuition, whether we know it or not, runs our life. The brain cannot function in real time on its own. So let's keep the connection as clean and pure as possible!