几天前，我看了一段视频，内容不长只有短短几分钟，回顾了NBA职业篮球联赛金州勇士队控球后卫斯蒂芬·库里一个赛季投中的286个三分球。视频当然来自视频网站YouTube，素材是库里拿下最有价值球员（MVP）的2014到2015年NBA赛季。我看了很多遍，估计现在点击量大概有240万。这段很有意思的画面没有任何画外音，我并没听到280多次叫好声，例如“库里！三分！”、“库里投中三分”、“库里投了一个超远距离的三分球”、“库里投出一个三分球”等。

接下来的赛季，库里的表现更上一层楼，令人难以置信地投中了402个三分球，赢得了NBA史上唯一一个毫无异议的MVP头衔。看库里投球仿佛溜进投篮大师的教学课堂。一次又一次，他完成得如此完美，站位精准姿势优雅，手腕轻甩，篮球就精准落入篮筐。他看上去在毫不费力地重复一些简单动作，而篮球仿佛置身牵引波束，弧线飞起25英尺高，悄然入筐。

一个人么能如此总是精确地瞄准目标，简直是不解之谜。事实上，无论神经学家可能怎么解释，人类对这个谜还是毫无头绪。有人提出“静眼”说，来自加拿大研究者琼·威克斯的发现。威克斯注意到，在瞄准目标以前，很多职业运动员的目光会长时间里聚焦在一点。（如果有人脑子里总是很乱，无法保持安静，练习静眼看来就能解决。）也有人指出，这跟大脑皮层和皮层下多个区域有关，主要负责计划和执行以目标为导向的行动。还有人认为，瞄准目标是肉眼不可见的过程，于电光火石之间完成，是“非自我中心”（专注于自身以外的某事或者某人）评估和“自我中心”评估的沟通，也由此在空间内确定目标和自我的相对位置。这种活动涉及大脑内部多个区域，从初级视觉皮质（非自我中心判断）到顶叶-额叶皮质（自我中心），从枕叶上脑回到下脑回，随后到其他部位。

一言以蔽之，还有很多需要研究。但可以确定的是，有一种方法几乎可以帮助所有人瞄准目标，就是提供一个凭本能就想去瞄准的物体。这就是为什么男厕所便池下水道附近经常贴一张苍蝇图样的贴纸（或者就在便池内画一只苍蝇）。这种做法在机场洗手间之类地方越来越普遍，减少小便喷溅方面效果相当好。据报道，在便池里放置苍蝇图画之后，荷兰阿姆斯特丹国际机场的男性洗手间小便喷溅率下降了80%，极大地减少了该机场清洁洗手间的成本。不必说，弄湿鞋子的情况肯定也少了。

这就是激发人们瞄准目标产生的无声力量，其实瞄准行为只需要瞬间，而且不耗分文成本。当然了，很少有人能像斯蒂芬·库里一样姿势优美地精准投出三分球。但不管能否深刻解释瞄准行为，可以先利用其中一些简单原理改善自身。（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审稿：夏林

This morning I watched Steph Curry hit 286 straight three-pointers in a matter of minutes. The video, which stitched together the Golden State point guard’s storied 2014-15 MVP season, was on YouTube, naturally. I watched it multiple times, which I imagine is a phenomenon that accounts for a number of its more than 2.4- million views to date. But the most instructive screening came with the sound off—when I couldn’t hear “Curry! Three!” and “Curry hits the Three” and “Curry with the deep three” and “Curry unloads the three” and some version of that 282 more times.

Watching Curry—who, in the following season would outdo even this one, hitting an unimaginable 402 threes and winning the only unanimous MVP title in NBA history—is like sneaking into a master class in shooting. There he is, again and again, poised with the perfect footing, the perfect form, the perfect flick of the wrist, the perfect follow-through. There he is, in a seemingly effortless sequence of motions, sinking 25-footers in high, rounded, tractor-beam arcs that slip silently through the rim.

How anyone can aim like that—with such precision and consistency—is a great human mystery. And indeed, no matter what neuroscientists may claim, we’re not close to solving it. Some speak of the “Quiet Eye,” discovered by Canadian researcher Joan Vickers, which is a relatively long-lasting period of fixed gaze that many athletes seem to have just prior to aiming. (The quiet eye appears to tame the raucous brain that can’t seem to stay still.) Others point to a “mosaic of well-known cortical and subcortical areas associated with the planning and execution of goal-directed movements.” Others suggest aiming is an unseen tête-à-tête between lightning-fast “allocentric” (focusing on something or someone outside of yourself) assessments and “egocentric” ones, between framing the target in space and framing one’s own position relative to it—which involves activity across multiple regions of the brain, from the early visual cortex (allocentric judgment) to the parietofrontal cortex (egocentric), from the superior occipital gyrus (natch) to the inferior occipital gyrus, and then some.

In short, still much to figure out. But that said, there is something that improves almost everyone’s aim—and that’s to give us a target that we instinctively want to hit. This is why putting a decal sticker of a fly near the drain on a men’s room urinal (or actually painting it into the porcelain receptacle)—a practice that is becoming more common in places like airports—is so extraordinarily effective at reducing what its politely referred to as “human spillage.” When the motionless fly targets came to urinals at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, spillage rates reportedly dropped by 80% and led to a significant reduction in bathroom cleaning costs, to say nothing of wet shoes.

This is the quiet power of such target priming—a costless incentive to take a moment and aim. Very few, if any, of us will ever be able to square up and hit a three-pointer like Steph Curry. But there is magic nonetheless in the simple things we can do to improve our aim, whether we understand the process or not.