Habitual Gestures

This chapter examines “habitual gestures”—everyday bodily movements, such as walking or sitting, that are ingrained as muscle memory—as a form of motion associated with postwar realist cinema. Closely reading scenes of ordinary household activities in Umberto D (De Sica, 1952), Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946), and Mouchette (Bresson, 1967), this chapter shows how an aesthetics of habitual gestures compels one to attend to the invisible bodily movements between and within willed actions. In doing so, this motion form foregrounds the body’s nonconscious and automatic ways of moving. Reading such gestures alongside the notion of “bodily habit” in the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this chapter ultimately troubles Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the time-image as the dominant lens through which the postwar aesthetics of laboring bodies is understood.

A Futuristic Approach for Stroke Rehabilitation Using Smart Gloves

Stroke is a serious, common, and assured as a global health issue across the globe. Stroke is one of most common cause of death and is a leading cause of impairment in adults. Despite all impressive progression and development in the treatment of stroke, without effective modes of care most stroke patients care will continue to rely on physiotherapy involvement. The purpose of this paper is to explain about a new and better device which helps patients affected by stroke who are not able to move their hands. To rehabilitate stroke survivors, the proposed prototype is designed such that it is a portable smart glove which helps users to regain their muscle memory by continuously contracting and releasing their muscles without the involvement of physiotherapist. This device/glove also consists of sensors that collect and send data to UI using ESP32. This UI is available for the doctors to see the statistics of glove usage and monitors the patient’s conditions. The Glove uses a soft robotics approach to replicate the human hand. The Glove initially aims to contract and release all the muscles in the hand in regular intervals of time. This muscle movement aims to build lost muscle memory.

A Personal Account: Attaining Muscle Memory and Higher Mental Functioning

Many articles have been written about elite performers that attain muscle memory and experience flow and zoneness. This article details how the author personally attained higher level performance and explains the feelings experienced during the process. A one-person study was designed to experience muscle memory and explore the mental aspects of putting. Twenty thousand attempts (strokes) were used. The design included four parts; a) Establish Baseline, b) Master Mechanics, c) Experience Muscle Memory, and d) Explore Mental Aspects. The conversion rate for the first 1,000 attempts during baseline was 58.3 percent and for the last 1,000 attempts was 90.4 percent. The concept of deliberate practice was used throughout the study showing performance increases. When experiencing muscle memory it was found to be boring and far from fun. When the mental aspects were explored the concepts of flow and pre-live generated enthusiasm and joy.

A juvenile climbing exercise establishes a muscle memory boosting the effects of exercise in adult rats

One of the ideas stemming from the discovery of a cellular memory in muscle cells has been that an early exercise period could induce a long-term muscle memory, boosting the effects of exercise later in life. In general muscles are more plastic in younger animals, so we devised a 5-week climbing exercise scheme with food reward administered to juvenile rats (post-natal week 4-9). The juvenile exercise increased fiber cross-sectional area (fCSA), and boosted nuclear accretion. Subsequently the animals were subjected to 10 weeks of detraining (week 9-19, standard caging). During this period fCSA became similar in the animals that had been climbing compared to Naive controls, but the elevated number of myonuclei induced by the climbing were maintained. When the Naive rats were subjected to two weeks of adult exercise (week 19-21) there was little effect on fCSA, while the previously trained rats displayed an increase of 19%. Similarly, when the rats were subjected to unilateral surgical overload in lieu of the adult climbing exercise, the increase in fCSA was 20% (juvenile climbing group) and 11% (Naive rats) compared to the contralateral leg. This demonstrated that juvenile exercise can establish a muscle memory. The juvenile climbing exercise with food reward led to leaner animals with lower body weight. These differences were to some extent maintained throughout the adult detraining period in spite of all animals being fed ad libitum, indicating a form of body weight memory.

Vulnerable Civilians: Coalition Checkpoints and the Perception of Hostile Intent

This chapter examines civilian casualties at coalition checkpoints in Afghanistan and Iraq, focusing on the decision to use lethal force against individuals considered to be hostile. Drawing on the testimony of American soldiers, this chapter argues that the decision to use lethal force can be seen as an affective judgement, with soldiers often resorting to ‘muscle memory’ as they sought to identify potential threats amidst the chaos and confusion of war. It will argue that these affective judgements do not occur within a cultural vacuum but are animated and informed by a set of background assumptions that mark certain populations as dangerous, threatening and hostile before they even arrive on the scene. To understand what made civilians so vulnerable to death and injury at coalition checkpoints, it will be necessary to inquire into the affective schemes of intelligibility that render certain lives disposable and certain bodies profoundly injurable in war.

The Effects of Gender Affirming Treatment on the Sporting Performance and Muscle Memory of Transgender Athletes. A Protocol for The Tavistock Transgender Athlete Study.

Introduction: The issue of integrating transgender athletes into sport is becoming more prominent with the rising numbers of those identifying as transgender in society. Whether it is fair for transgender athletes to be included in their affirmed gender category across all levels of sport from grassroots to elite is the crux of the debate. Previous studies have shown muscle mass loss in transwomen and muscle mass and strength gain in transmen after 1 year of gender-affirming treatment (GAT). Wiik et al., 2020 found that transmen retain a strength disadvantage over cisgender men and transwomen retain muscle mass and strength advantages over cisgender women after 1 year of GAT. Roberts et al., 2020 also found that running performance in transwomen was maintained but not baseline muscular strength. However, very little data on sports performance measures outside muscular strength and running times exist, nor has any of the previous data been compared with a comparative control group. Aim: To investigate the effect of “muscle memory” in transgender athletes and investigate changes in physiology after 2 years of GAT such as bone mineral density, lean muscle mass, and fat mass, coupled with sports performance measures in transwomen and transmen athletes and compare them with a cisgender female athletic cohort. This will elucidate what advantages/disadvantages transgender athletes gain/retain after 2 years of GAT over their cisgender counterparts and this will better inform policymakers who control their integration into their affirmed gender category in sport.