What makes some people more able to time better than others at rhythm games?

[Reach]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

I thought timing was all cerebellum. The purkinje connections in the cerebellum are mind-bogglingly evenly spaced, something that would be absolutely necessary for keeping things even.

They are involved in keeping tempo. I left that part out to simplify the explanation

Especially because the cerebellum has so many different functions. It's obviously involved to a degree. I would expect SM players to have particularly developed portions of the cerebellum, but the Cerebellum does coordinate fluidity and quality of motion as I said before, and these functions are largely irrelevant and it could explain Arch0wl's anecdote (though to be fair, I question the validity of said anecdote. I highly doubt SM players are bad dancers. they're just untrained dancers)

The truth of the matter is that most of your brain would be activate while playing, for example, areas of the frontal lobe and areas involved with memory (hippocampus), along with many other motor pathways. I would expect, however, that the areas I mentioned would be lit up like a wild fire though on an MRI and would dominate most of the neural resources that go into being a good player.

[Cavernio]

Of course I would expect someone good at the game to have lots of activity in the motor cortex, and for it to be specialized in doing well at SM, no doubt about it. Also for higher tiers of visual cortex to be activated more due to pattern recognition, and interconnectivity of it all would be activated/created in excellent players. But for a player like me or frank munoz, it seems to me that a poorly calibrated/inneravted (for lack of a better way to say it) cerebellum, the evenness parts, could be what's holding us back from becoming great players. Afterall, if I can't make my finger tap an even rhythm, I wouldn't expect it to be able to accurately tap something in time to what I see on a screen perfectly, even if I were as good as an expert player with every other aspect of play.
Of course there would have to be a partially separate ability from purely perceiving evenness though...like if I can tell my finger is uneven from how it sounds, my auditory system can hear evenness just fine. Does hearing evenness activate the cerebellum? (like a test, say, where you just have to say whether a tempo you hear is even or not, what brain areas are activated in people who are really good at that versus bad at it, and what overlap does that have with people who are good at tapping an even rhythm.)
This isn't to say that that would be something that couldn't be overcome, although I would suspect (I don't really know) the cerebellum has less neuroplasticity than very changeable cortex.

Ultimately there are a ton of possible failure points from the variety of necessary skills to be excellent/perfect at SM, right from the beginning where you need to be able to physically see all the way to being able to physically move, and every breakdown step inbetween. There may be more common sticking points that practiced players reach, but without any sort of proper data collection from watching people and then what they say and imagining techniques (not just fMRI because that's relatively poor temporal resolution, but EEG as well), it's all just theory.

[SCWolf]

Now, I'm not a neuroscience major or a professional on the topic, but I'd like to give my opinion because this is an interesting topic.

From what it seems, rhythm only helps play a part in overall accuracy, it does not dictate it. Playing a file is heavily dependent on pattern recognition. Accuracy is generally improved by your comfort level being on par with the speed at which you're reading. Rhythm comes in after. What you're reading on the screen can actually tell your brain what tempo the song is being played at and how to adjust. How rhythmically inclined you are can differentiate how well you "adjust".

How fast you read in terms of speed and why it helps is something I have yet to figure out without contradicting myself while explaining it, but I think it can be related to general reading comprehension in literacy. People will read faster once they become more adept because it's easy for them.

[kommisar]

Is there such a thing as reaching a physical plateau? How do people differ in terms of what is physically beyond reach? I know I probably won't ever get as fast as Stian doing 400bpm jumpstream but I often wonder if I had kept playing as intensely maybe I could. Or could I?

same applies for pad. in regards to speed of reading I don't doubt people could get used to faster after a while, but I actually read somewhat slower than most people (used to read c755 on sm5, 725 for solo). But is there a limit to how fast I can physically read notes as well? After a while it would probably become muscle memory if conditioned enough.

[MinaciousGrace]

I've actually thought about/really want to see brain scans of high level sm play

shame it'll never happen because it would be really fucking cool

also I think physical and mental limitations are so far beyond what we're currently seeing that's it's not worth thinking about reaching them at this point but that's just me.

[Arch0wl]

so I bought the book Perfection Point to see if it could lend any insight to the book I'm writing about rhythm game design

there's a chapter on the theoretical max bench press and the author mentions that a limitation on us seeing anything close to the max bench is because many of the most successful powerlifters go into wrestling, there isn't money in powerlifting

which made me think: if something this standardized, sanctioned, and mainstream could have these difficulties with attracting people who could reach its maximum, how does something obscure like Stepmania rank by comparison?

a lot of us are limited by the following:

- lack of popularity (obviously)

- lack of standards (hopefully my book will help with this since I've delineated basically every type of skill you could have in a rhythm game, lmfao)

- lack of technology (less obvious, but the right keyboard makes a huge difference, ESPECIALLY for index -- if the "index controller" ever gets off the ground, that may be a new tech standard for that playstyle)

- lack of knowledge base for how to improve (improvement at sports has literally been made into a science by this point, improvement at semi e-sports like rhythm games not so much (yes I just called rhythm games e-sports))

- lack of motivation (you can make money with sports, you cannot make money off of Stepmania although if one of us ever gets rich and dumps a lot of money into making SM an e-sport thing that might change)

[MinaciousGrace]

Originally Posted by Arch0wl

improvement at semi e-sports like rhythm games not so much

korea, japan etc

e: also there are a handful of players who have independently taken a methodical approach to improvement at the game- reach, rubix, myself I know and others I'm sure, that being said there isn't really a centralized knowledge database to which newer players can default for information, but I'm gonna be honest if a player doesn't have the capacity or willingness to broach the subject on their own I don't think there's any reasonable expectation that they're capable of pushing limits in the first place.

[Jerry DB]

In my experience the level of interest you put into it and your attitude has a huge amount to do with how well you play. I've tried many things in life and the things that I seemed to be a natural at, were the things that I obsessed over the most. If you're into something so much that it's what you think about when you go to bed and comes to mind constantly throughout the day, then there is no doubt you will improve quicker then others. There are clearly neurological patterns that allow your brain to fire off more quickly with repetition. Even with that being said the amount of interest you put in while doing the activity makes a huge difference, even if you have been doing something your whole life. The more you learn to focus on a single activity, the better you are at channeling out all other activities and thoughts so you can truly focus on the task at hand. My ability to focus while playing guitar and skating definitely transcends into my ability to focus on ffr and vice versa. I don't have any scientific articles or whatever, just experience. Sure there are genetic differences, but if you are constantly thinking you were dealt a bad hand, it inhibits your ability to focus. In my mind the most important things are:
1. Positivity
2. Obsession/time spent
3. Focus
4. genetic differences
most of the time from what I see is people try something for a very short amount of time and are constantly comparing themselves to the greats and put themselves down because of it. I think 90 percent of the time your genetics are just as good as those on top, you just didn't stick with it and keep telling yourself you will make it.

[Cavernio]

Are you saying you wouldn't be able to do nearly as well at ffr while having a conversation because you need that much focus jerry?