One of my favorite recent reads was The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee. The book does a beautiful and elegant job of explaining some very difficult neurological concepts in a clear and straightforward way. The concept I’m focusing on for this article has to do with tool use. According to the Blakeslees’ research, we have areas in our brains dedicated to mapping our bodies in both motor function and sensory data. These “body maps” respond dynamically to our environments and the tools we use.

When you pick up a tool, the body maps associated with your arms and hands expand to include the shape of and a set of potential uses for the tool (i.e., a stick comes loaded with concepts like “poke things with,” “reach things with,” etc.). When you pick up a simple tool, the map of your hands extends into that tool, and the tool becomes, for all intents and purposes, a part of you. The map includes the tool as long as you’re holding it, and different tools have different sets of potential uses loaded into them. Further, the more you use a tool, the more likely you are to develop permanent tool maps. This can be thought of as (at least part of) the brain’s role in muscle memory.

Bear in mind that these maps are physiological regions of the brain, dedicated to “virtualizing” our bodies and environments. These internal representations of our bodies don’t end at our skin, however. Simply having someone stand too close and noticing the deeply invasive feeling of being almost touched is enough to demonstrate that.

In my next article, I’m going to discuss some of the ramifications of this observation about personal space as I perceive it to relate to what are often called “psychic” perceptions.

Recommended reading:

• The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee