Yup, got it. I knew I was going off the rails a bit with speculative thinking in an off topic directionVK, I was being somewhat restrictive only because of the subject of the thread, which focusses not only on tala but on the manifestation of it as a practical necessity for musicians when singing and playing.
On the topic, as I wrote earlier in this thread, our hands and feet are designed to work together, with synchronized movements. Sometimes when the muscles have to be moved quickly when there is no time for signals to reach the brain, the spinal cord takes over, does the calculation on behalf of the brain and moves the muscle. That is how reflex action works and I suspect some of that is involved when we get tripped up in our thala keeping with the foot when the hands needed to move out of sync with the feet. Disconnecting that coordinated movement so we can independently move them at our will takes repeated practice. That probably rewires the brain. That is probably what muscle memory is. The skeletal muscles do not move by themselves, they need to get signals to move it. Is muscle memory then spinal cord memory?
This leads me to a question ( possibly out of topic ): Those who are excellent at thala keeping with the foot while playing an instrument, do they show any decreased skills when the arms and feet need to move together? If rewiring of the brain/spinal cord is involved in this disassociation, it may show up in other activities. Like, running and catching a ball requires so much coordination between the arms and the legs. Are great violinists poor ball catchers?