Intelligence may be even more distributed than we thought.

How humans are able to move at all remains a puzzle. Our muscles are controlled by thousands of nerve cells in the spinal cord. This entire, complex system must work as a whole in order to successfully create a single motion. The new research shows that even if we repeat a certain motion with high accuracy, the involved nerve cells never repeat their activity patterns. This particular observation reflects the organisation of the nerve cells of the cerebral cortex. . . .

"Our findings contradict conventional wisdom about spinal cord functions," says Rune W. Berg from Department of Neuroscience and Pharmacology at the Faculty of Health Sciences.

Until now, the general belief was that the spinal networks functioned mechanically and completely without random impulses. The new discovery enables researchers to use the theory on cortical networks to explore how spinal cords generate movements.

It seems so. My body seems to know things that my mind does not. We work as a team most of the time and put the puck in the net on occasion.