Why you never forget how to ride a bike

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There are some among us who can’t remember which pants they wore yesterday or whether they have plans tonight. Take that person and put them on a bicycle, however, and if they had any kind of comfort level riding in the past, odds are, they’ll have no trouble balancing and steering, even if it’s been years—or decades—since their last ride.

The axiom “like riding a bike” exists for a reason, and it’s supported by ample amounts of evidence that casts light on the weird neuroscience of memory. So why is it, exactly, that we seemingly never forget how to push the pedals and ride? 

The many types of memory

On the surface, remembering a skill like cycling and also being able to call to mind your spouse’s birthday seem similar. After all, these are two things you learned in the past, so it stands to reason your brain would process them the same way. That, however, is not the case, explains Dr. Andrew Budson, a professor of neurology at Boston University and co-author of the book Why We Forget and How to Remember Better. 

Humans have three distinct kinds of long-term memories, he explains, each of which are processed, stored, and accessed via different pathways in the brain. 

1. Semantic memory is how we store information and facts that allows us to navigate the world: how to use objects and tools like toasters and screwdrivers or knowing the differences between cats and dogs. 
2. Episodic memory pertains to long-term memories specific to the person who lived through the experience, like a first kiss. 
3. Finally, procedural memory allows us to retain knowledge of tasks that become second nature and automatic, like playing guitar and, yes, riding a bike. (What we call muscle memory is a type of procedural memory, though the latter is a broader term. All muscle memory is procedural, but not all procedural memory is muscle memory). 

The truth is there’s nothing particularly special about bike riding—the axiom could have used many other skills, such as ice skating or swimming (in fact, swimming was the favored example of something people don’t forget how to do up until the 1940s, when cycling’s popularity exploded). 

“Riding a bicycle would certainly be a sort of a motor activity, and it depends upon some structures deep inside the brain called the basal ganglia,” says Budson, along with other regions of the brain, including the cerebellum. “Those are the key regions, and that’s very different than memory for episodes of our life, such as remembering last night’s dinner.”

Procedural memories get hardwired in, while still leaving some room for malleability. One bike isn’t the same as another—riding a mountain bike is slightly different than taking a leisurely trip across town on a fixed gear—so once a skill is stored, the basic motions are easy to access, but you can still adapt. 

“What is quite different about procedural memories is that they rely on these different brain structures that are, in general, much more resistant to change over time,” says Budson. “That’s why once you’ve learned how to touch type, you know you can still touch type, although you can certainly adapt it. When you get a new computer and they’ve moved the Escape key or something like that, you’re able to adapt to that.”

Why scientists can’t study cycling and memory directly

Given the popularity of the phrase, it may come as a surprise that there’s not a ton of research out there that specifically examines why we retain the memory of how to ride a bicycle. 

That’s not to say there’s nothing out there on cycling and memory: Some studies have concluded that cycling desks help improve cognitive performance. Others have found a linkage between cycling and improved long-term memory. But few scientists have directly studied biking as an example of procedural memory. 

There’s a few reasons why: first, it can be hard to scan a person’s brain while they’re riding around on a 12 speed. Second, as Dr. Elizabeth Kensinger, a psychology professor at Boston College and Budson’s co-author, explains, a subject self-reporting how good they are on a bike can be faulty and could skew results. 

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Instead, neurologists and psychologists have designed experiments to test procedural memory on entirely new skills, including having subjects draw shapes by looking at their hands in a mirror. It’s tricky at first, but over repetition, they start to get better and better.

“My best guess is that it just feels very uncontrolled versus all of the types of motor skills that scientists have been able to train people how to do,” says Kensinger. 

There are far easier, more convenient ways to examine procedural memory. In science, control over variables is essential to reliable results, and bringing a few folks who have gotten rusty on a bicycle out for a few spins around a velodrome leaves too much to chance to gain any solid data. 

Practice makes perfect

Doing something once isn’t enough to generate the kind of recall associated with procedural memory. The neural pathways involved in the activity need to be beefed up. 

“It’s so much faster for you to learn something the second or the third time than it was for you to learn it the first time,” says Kensinger. “There is something that is priming those pathways to be able to become established more much more quickly.”

In other words, hopping on a bike once won’t be enough for you to be able to do it again perfectly after decades away from bicycles. Repetition is key to forming procedural memories that can be easily jogged even after extended periods of inactivity. 

“Our procedural memories do degrade, but they degrade more slowly than your episodic memories,” explains Budson. “So there’s no doubt that practice helps it to stay very active and that it comes back more quickly.”

While procedural memory activities may need repetition to get wired into our brains, the good news is we’re capable of forming these kinds of memories throughout our lives. 

“If you think about many older adults, they need to learn pretty complicated motor skills,” says  Kensinger. “They might need to learn how to use a wheelchair that might have fairly complicated mechanisms to lock and unlock the brakes. Older adults are quite capable at learning those types of procedural skills as well.”

While adapting to new limitations can be frustrating, our ability to develop new skills near-automatic is helpful as we age. Whether that’s learning how to use a walker, or even using a computer or iPad, grandma and grandpa just need some time and patience to develop new procedural memories. 

It’s easy to see why humans evolved to retain and execute skills without conscious thought. Running away from predators or searching for food shouldn’t be something that requires a ton of focus. So the next time you’re zooming along on your bike, take a second to thank your procedural memory, even if you can’t remember where exactly you’re going. 

In Ask Us Anything, Popular Science answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from the everyday things you’ve always wondered to the bizarre things you never thought to ask. Have something you’ve always wanted to know? Ask us.

 

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