• cynar@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Given there are people suffering from exactly that. It’s also unfortunately common in Alzheimer’s patients. The classic example is piano playing.

    Muscle memory is a short hand for changes to the low level reactions. It’s a mix of brain spine and muscle nerves. E.g. I can still do martial arts moves fine from reflex, even though I no longer have explicit memories of learning them. A large chunk of our personality is built up of implicit memory. They act in the same way, just internally. E.g. your maths skills are based on implicit memories. The memories that created the skills are long gone, but the skills remain.