Like many other boys growing up in the 1950’s, the B&B Blogger never turned down an opportunity to go to the movies. [That's what it was called. You never went to a movie. It was always, "Hey, yawanttago ta the movies?"] Westerns weren’t the B&B Blogger’s favorites. But, in those days, probably seven out of every 10 movies in which the Blogger and his friends would be interested were westerns – even if the hero was a dog, and not somebody on a white horse.
And, in probably seven out of 10 westerns, the big and nearly climactic scene would feature a gunfight. There might be multiple actors involved (usually stupidly “hiding” behind a water trough or a split-rail fence). But, the main focus was always on the duelists: The bad guy, played way, WAY over the top by somebody like Lee Van Cleef, would come slowly (but jingly) down the street – every step a determined act of sweaty meanness. The good guy, played straight as an arrow by Roy or Jimmy or John or Gary, would be seen standing still at the other end of a long dusty street, gulping and not really wanting to move forward. No wonder! The good guy always had a handicap, right? It might be that he had hurt his gun hand and was going to have to draw with his left ear. Or maybe he only had a single-shot derringer to go up against the bad guy’s TWO six-guns with frighteningly long barrels. But, of course, the main handicap was that no matter how stinkin’ bad the bad guy was, the good guy simply could NOT DRAW FIRST. No matter. The good guy ALWAYS drew second and ALWAYS won.
Of course, the Blogger and all of his friends would be happy at the outcomes of these duels. But, soon enough, there would be scoffing at the impossibility of drawing second and still winning – every time. The Blogger would then try to explain to his friends why actions controlled by the pre-supplementary motor area region of the medial-frontal cortex are typically slightly more inhibited at onset than are actions initiated by the planned movement sequence in the parietal cortex. Yet, inevitably, before the Blogger could get to the most exciting parts of his explanation, the group’s conversation would veer quickly to debates over something like the relative merits of Camels vs. Luckies.
…And, thus, somewhat-fond memories tickled the B&B Blogger’s hippocampus this week as he was reading the Feb 3 edition of the Proceedings of the Royal Society and came upon an article on the neurological superiority of reaction over intention. Welchman, Stanley, Schomers, Miall, and Bulthoff reported a clever experiment showing that initiation of an action takes nano-longer than the initiation of the same physiological behavior made in reaction to the former, likely because the two processes are controlled by different parts of the brain. As you must have surmised by now, the speculation – in gunfighter terms – is that an unprompted action is controlled by the more inhibited medial-frontal cortex while reactive behaviors take the faster parietal loop. The possible explanation? Throughout evolution, it was more important to react to a predator’s attack than to think about attacking a predator.
In closing, the B&B Blogger would like to send out a personal, and long-overdue, message to J.G., Weed, Cueball, and Nerf: Nah-na-nah-na-nan-nah!!!! I told you so, you jerks.