(Re-written March 08)

If you're anything of a fan, you'll know that when the bad guys are around, Spiderman gets a "tingle" from his 'Spidy Sense'.

Likewise, experienced riders often talk about getting 6th sense things aren't quite right, so they slow down, look around, just before something unpleasant happens, and thank their lucky stars for the warning.

What they are developing is a biking version of Spidy Sense. It appears to be a mixture of movement detection to which peripheral vision is incredibly sensitive, plus subconscious pattern recognition that allows the rider to react to a shape without actually thinking "large metal box + driver  = van".

A quick lesson on how your brain is put together is in order to understand this further.

The largest part of the brain is the Neo-Cortex where conscious thinking and reasoning skills are centred. But hard-wired to it are two other important components.

In the Mid-brain, the Reticular Activating System works with the Limbic System to control attention. It filters incoming data from our senses, picking out important pieces of information and bringing them into consciousness - perhaps someone mentioning our name in a noisy room - including the vast amount of visual information sent to the brain by the eyes.

The most primitive part of our brain is sometimes called the Reptilian brain, because we share it with crocodiles. It's directly connected to the spinal cord and responsible for controlling many of the basic body functions, as well as being constantly on guard for danger. It's blisteringly quick in responding - it needs to be if we're to duck when someone hurls a rock at our head - but it doesn't think. It only chooses the most basic fight or flight responses that suited our remote ancestors.

For a rider with some experience under their belt, the Mid-brain detects everything is okay and tells the Reptilian brain to 'stand down', so we can carry on with our basic riding functions on autopilot, and our Neo-cortex working on creative thinking, learning from new experiences and generally having fun.

What seems to happen is that the Mid-brain processes incoming information subconsciously, compares the real-time situation with a database of stored memories, and tries to find a match. If there's a pre-programmed response (do you have to think about what to do at a red traffic light), then the autopilot continues to operate. That's our normal 'default' riding state.

Even as experienced riders, some things will heighten our attention - difficult riding conditions like strong winds or heavy rain, being on the wrong side of the road in Europe, riding at speed, riding in an unfamiliar group. You should notice the key point - they're all things we unlikely to do on a regular basis, and initially, they'll demand the real-time processing power of the Neo-cortex. Of course, as you get gain experience, you start switching these novel experiences over to autopilot too - at the end of a week in France, you aren't having to think about riding on the right, you just do it.

Inexperienced riders won't have experienced the range of situations that an experienced rider will have. In fact, new riders won't have experienced any! This is why as we learn to drive and ride, we need to concentrate so hard - there's nothing in the data bank for the Mid-brain to process, so nothing is automatic. We have to think about every single thing we do, taking in information and processing it in real-time in the Neo-cortex. It's exhausting and something we can't keep up for long.

As we develop as new riders, we begin to store away some memories of common traffic situations and basic machine control, so more and more of our riding - like the red traffic light example - is handled subconsciously. It's at this point we start to relax and gain confidence, and riding becomes much less tiring.

The problem is that we're still relatively inexperienced, but as confidence goes up, we tend to leave too much to our autopilot. At this point we arrive in the middle of a developing hazard we haven't experienced before. If we were still concentrating, we'd likely spot it and our real time brain would come up with a way to do something about it.

But if we're relying on the Mid-brain to deal with it, there won't be a match in the database. If the Mid-brain fails to get a match, it might wake the rider up to think about the problem. Or it might not; in which case we carry on oblivious to the danger because we simply haven't recognised it as such. So we don't do anything at all, right up to the moment that the Mid-brain detects a threat to safety and turns over control to the Reptilian brain.

Once control is handed to the Reptilian brain, then communication between the Mid-brain and the Neo-cortex is shut down, derailing conscious thought. The Reptilian brain usually switches into automatic 'Fight or Flight' mode, at which point we usually overreact or freeze,  with typical panic responses like grabbing the brakes or failing to do anything at all. I'll be surprised if you don't recognise that situation - I certainly do. Ouch!

When riders experience Spidy Sense, what seems to happen is that with added riding experience, the Neo-cortex has a bigger and better database to look at, so usually it finds a similar past event that had unpleasant consequences and so sends a "WAKE UP - things aren't quite right" message to the Neo-cortex to do something.

Unfortunately, we're usually not quite sure what - it's a bit like hearing our name in that crowded room I mentioned earlier - we know someone said it but we don't know who so we snap to attention and start looking around. Likewise on the bike - we slow down and start scanning.

That can still be useful, particularly in a unique situation we haven't experienced before - just the high level of alertness may allow us to respond correctly,

Unfortunately, it's a vague warning and we may not react in time to deal with a rapidly developing situation - it can take two to three seconds for conscious thinking with the Neo-cortex to look, analyse the situation and figure out what's happening, and come up with a solution. Compared with the Reptilian brain, the Neo-cortex is slow; very VERY slow.

It's worth remembering how far we travel in three seconds even at a very modest 30mph - it's 40 metres. Now work out how far you travel at 90mph in that time!

Before our slow real-time brain has worked out what the problem is, the Mid-brain might have detected the threat and handed control back to the 'fight or flight' Reptilian brain so in reality we're no better off than a novice rider as we grab the brakes and panic!

So, that's the theory - what can we do about it?

A partial solution is to "burn" a learned response to an emergency so that there is an alternative pathway to circumvent instinctive 'fight or flight' responses to danger, so that we instinctively respond correctly.

Think back to that flung rock that we were ducking. Turn it into a cricket ball, and think how we can learn to catch it without thinking. Back on the bike, we can modify the instinctive pathways by mastering and regularly practising techniques such as covering and progressively squeezing the brakes, sounding the horn, and swerving away from danger, so that even when reacting in a hurry, we don't let the Reptilian brain take over completely.

But we're far more likely to get the right rapid response if we're ready and paying attention to what we are doing.

Back to the cricket analogy - it's necessary to focus on the game, not doze off in the sun, if we are going to catch that ball. Likewise on the bike, we'll do far better if we know what to consciously look for and how to look for it.

However, there's a limit to how hard we can concentrate and how many things we can focus on at the same time - overload our thinking Neo-cortex with problems (like riding too fast in a group in France - three new experiences at the same time) and we may well end up looking at the wrong one at the wrong moment, and we'll be back to triggering the 'fight or flight' response anyway.

So it's good news to find that Spidy Sense can be trained to recognise "trigger events" so that the Mid-brain wakes up the Neo-cortex and sets off the correct train of conscious responses automatically.

As suggested with the traffic light, most but not all of these trigger events are "visual cues" - for example, the shape and colour of road signs, the presence and movement of vehicles on a nearby - but we usually change gear by listening to the motor and we'll detect a skid or slide by feel through the seat of our pants.

It's not difficult to learn how to use "visual cues" once the way they work is understood.

For instance, we can teach ourselves to RECOGNISE road signs by slowing down a bit and consciously scanning for their predictable shapes using our thinking mind, the Neo-cortex.

Virtually within minutes, the triangular shape is catalogued as the Mid-brain adds the visual cue to the 'database' of important shapes. and the Mid-brain then takes over the recognition job from our real-time brain, triggering the response of flicking our eyes to look directly at the sign so we start seeing, and more importantly reading, road signs all over the place, and leaving the decision making Neo-cortex free to decide what to do about the hazard.

Better yet, we can program in an automatic REACTION in terms of what we do with the bike too.

If we now add the necessary response - ie, having seen the junction sign, we actually visually search for the junction it's warning of, or having seen the bend sign, we actively change to an appropriate gear, reduce speed, set up the brakes etc. - we'll find that in just a day or two, those responses that we've had to think about soon burn an automatic unconscious pathway. The advantage is that our conscious mind is left free to search for ever more subtle clues.

If you doubt this, think of your response to a traffic light - you don't have to consciously search for a metal pole with three lights balanced on it at a junction, and then remember red for stop, green for go. You just "see it's red" and the reaction of rolling off the throttle and braking is automatic. Only in your very earliest days on the road did you actually have to look, spot and think what to do.

And perhaps most tellingly, for an experienced rider/driver the time you are most likely to make a cock-up at a traffic light is when it changes to amber; now you have to make a conscious decision whether to go or stop - and how often do you hesitate and make a mess of it? Far more often than you run a red light or stop at a green one!

And we can use that traffic light to program other useful responses - checking the mirrors, looking for lane markings and other signs, checking the surface where we may need to brake, seeing the light is actually green and remembering it might change.

We can learn to do program our brain to respond to all sorts of other situations or hazards. I don't consciously think 'blind entrance', 'lurking car', 'slippery-looking surface' any more than I have to consciously think 'red and white triangular sign displaying an '+' equals crossroads sign', I just see the visual cue and react accordingly. Likewise, a hazard that might make me slow automatically triggers a "what's behind" thought.

However, because the focussed view of the eye is a very narrow cone, if all we ever do is stare at the road directly ahead, we simply won't see the signs even if we are looking. And if we don't see it, we won't add it to our database. So, for developing riders, consciously using a scanning technique (and going slow enough to be COMFORTABLE using scanning) is just as important as knowing what to look for.

For some reason many riders think this learning process is difficult or not something they need to do. But learning to respond to visual cues is easy to practice, easy to get good results from and one of the most powerful techniques available to us.

Don't take my word for it - Barbara Alam comments: "I've got a lot better at that since doing your course. It really didn't take more than a day or two of practice, with the occasional effort to "revise" by consciously doing it, to make it become an unconscious thing".

To be continued...