When two limbs are weaker than one: Sensorimotor syncopation with alternating hands

This study addresses the demands of alternating bimanual syncopation, a coordination mode in which the two hands move in alternation while tapping in antiphase with a metronomic tone sequence. Musically trained participants were required to engage in alternating bimanual syncopation and five other coordination modes: unimanual syncopation where taps are made (with the left or right hand) after every tone; unimanual syncopation where taps are made after every other tone; bimanual synchronization with alternating hands; unimanual synchronized tapping with every tone; and unimanual tapping with every other tone. Variability in tap timing was greatest overall for alternating bimanual syncopation, indicating that it is the most difficult. This appears to be due to instability arising from the simultaneous presence of two levels of antiphase coordination (one between the pacing sequence and the hands, the other between the two hands) rather than factors relating to movement frequency or dexterity limits of the nonpreferred hand.     

TWO STRAINS IN BUDDHIST CAUSALITY

This essay will focus on the Buddhist metaphysics of experience which is generally glossed over due to the excessive concern for the ultimate goal in Buddhism, nirvīna , and in consequence of which the emphasis has been on the practice of; meditative discipline in aspiration for that goal. Yet neither nirvana nor meditative discipline can be understood properly without examining the full dimension of our ordinary experience. Such an examination should reveal to us the unique ways in which the Buddhist refers to the bounded and unbounded conditions of existence. All this is novel insofar as metaphysics goes and indeed it would have to be a unique form of metaphysics in order to accommodate the dual aspect of existence. The key to this metaphysics lodges in the Buddhist concept of experiential process,¹ technically known as pratītyasamutpāda which is variously translated as relational origination, interrelational origination or dependent origination. It refers to the Buddhist concept of causality but, as we shall see, it is a unique concept with more than the usual Western connotation.