Order Order!
As a kid, I used to go watch my cousin play football and once in a while he let me take a few shots at the goalpost. I kicked the ball using all my strength and sadly watched it roll slowly towards the net. My cousin, on the other hand, was an expert in what is called the crossbar shot, in which he kicked the ball precisely so that it hit the bar over the goal post and it would bounce back. He had no problem doing it repeatedly and showing off his skills. What he did was something that requires high precision training. With experience, he mastered the art of making contact with the ball in a specific way such that it hits the crossbar. Contrarily, what I and many novice players like me did was simply make contact with the ball and drive it towards the goal post. Unlike the crossbar shot it does not require a high level of precision. Interestingly, my brother could deliver the shot from only a specific location and back then I only wondered why. Many years later, studying the brain, I realized what he was doing was called perceptual learning. Practicing every day from the same location, he got the knack of making the perfect move for his very famous crossbar shot. Very instinctively, I felt that the higher-order areas of the brain are responsible for such precision.
Higher-order brain areas are what define our species. Planning, judgment, memory, attention are among the many functions which can be attributed to them. Perception is a complex phenomenon where one makes sense of the environment. Although the higher areas hold the topmost level in the hierarchy of functions, there are some things that only the lower order brain areas are capable of doing. This is rightly called the reverse hierarchy theory of perceptual learning. A large number of neurons respond to a wide range of stimuli in higher areas. Hence, a slight difference in the features of the stimuli can also be generalizable. Kicking a ball, the way I did could have been accomplished from a range of nearby positions, and also different balls.
As the task becomes more and more precise, the higher area pushes the job over to the lower areas, which in turn start to get specialized in the task that they are trained to perform. In these areas one shall find neurons specific for location, orientation, size and other features. The areas for such features start become narrow and highly specialized for specific features. Unlike my belief, the lower areas are actually responsible for performing difficult tasks and the learning is not transferable to similar stimuli.
Although my brother used the lower areas of his brain, he deserved far more credit as when it comes to perception the orders are reversed!
