To begin, lie down flat on your back
with both legs extended or simply sit on a chair cross legged. Lift your
right foot a few inches off of the ground and begin moving it in a
clockwise motion. While moving your right foot, use your right index
finger and draw the number six (6) in the air. Within moments your foot
will begin moving in a counterclockwise motion and you won’t be able to
control it without putting your foot down first. Why does this happen?
The left side of our brains controls the right side of our bodies and is
most responsible for timing and rhythm control. The left side has
incredible difficulty understanding and operating two opposite movements
at the same time, so it then combines the two motions to a single
motion.
Ganzfeld Procedure
The intended effect of the Ganzfeld
Procedure is to experience sensory distortions, such as seeing horses
prancing in the clouds or hearing the voice of deceased family. To do
this you will need a radio, tape (use tape that you won’t mind putting
on your face and eyebrows), and a ping pong ball that is cut in half.
You begin the procedure by tuning the radio to a station that is playing
static. With the radio near your head, lie down in a comfortable area
and tape the halved ping pong balls on each of your eyes. You should
begin experiencing the sensory distortion experiences within a few
minutes. The reason that this bizarre experience can be achieved is
because our brains are addicted to the five senses, and with all of
these stimuli blocking our senses our brain ends up making up its own.
Confuse Your Photoreception
When you look at an image for a
certain length of time (usually 30 seconds) and then immediately look at
a white area, an effect called an afterimage occurs. This visual
phenomenon is most commonly explained by how the rods and cones
(photoreceptors) used become “fatigued” and don’t work as well as they
should. This is caused by a temporary bleaching of the light-sensitive
pigments within the photoreceptors being used. The result causes the
photoreceptors to be imbalanced which causes a combination of previously
viewed colors and images to combine when looking at the white field.
Confuse Your Cognitio
The spinning silhouette illusion provides the viewer with an image that appears to be spinning clockwise or counterclockwise. In reality, the image is in 2D and is actually simply shifting back and forth. Since our brains evolved in a 3D world, they can’t properly identify the image’s true movements and therefore uses already known stimuli to fill in the blanks and perceive the image to be spinning.
Confuse Your Hearing
Three people are needed to do this:
one subject and two observers. You will also need a headset that is
connected to routine plastic pipes on both sides. The subject begins by
sitting on a chair that is in between and equally distant from both
observers. The observers then hold onto the plastic pipes on the
subject’s headset that is on the observers’ corresponding side. One at a
time, both observers should speak into the pipes. Right now the subject
should be able to correctly identify which side the voice is coming
from. Then, the observers should switch pipes and again speak into the
pipes. The subject’s brain will become confused and cause the subject to
say the voice is coming from the opposite direction that it is.
18000 Hz Sine Wave
You may have already heard of this,
just not by this name. The 18000 Hz Sine Wave is commonly known by its
modern use by teenagers as a ringtone that older people are unable to
hear (which is why it was also given the name “under 20s”). The produced
sound is extremely high pitched and is audible to people who are young
and do not have a damaged inner ear or part of the brain that deals with
hearing.
Shrink Your Pain
Suffering from severe pain from an
injury or chronic pain can have a significant negative impact on our
daily living, but there is a way to decrease your pain without harsh
medications. A study done at Oxford University recently discovered a new
pain killer: the inverted binoculars. According to the study’s results,
subjects who looked at their injuries through the wrong end of
binoculars experienced a significantly less pain and even decreased
swelling. The reason this works is because the inverted binoculars makes
the affected body part appear much smaller, and our brains get slightly
confused and thinks your body part is really that small.
Feel a Phantom Sensation
Most people who lose a body part, such
as a forearm, experience phantom sensations where they still feel like
the missing limb is still attached to the body and can move on command.
Most of the time, individuals who experience this report the phantom
sensations to be painful and sometimes their phantom limb will feel like
it is twitching or feels itchy.
Confuse Your Depth Perception
We all see the world in three dimensions (3D) which is possible
through our brain’s ability to properly perceive depth. Our eyes work
together to correctly identify depth perception, so closing one eye will
alter the way your mind perceives visual stimuli. Our brains are
trained to judge time and space in order to perceive depth correctly but
are only able to do so with both eyes. One simple way to test this is
to stare at an object at least a foot or two away from you and close one
eye, then switch to closing the other eye and you will notice that the
object appears to be in a different location.
Confuse Your Proprioception (The Pinocchio Effect)
You will need: 2 chairs facing the
same direction and one in front of the other, 2 people sitting in the
chairs, and a blindfold. The person blindfolded sits in the rear chair
and will face the back of the person without a blindfold. The
blindfolded person will put one hand on his own nose and at the same
time be reaching around the person in front of them and touch their
nose. Then, the blindfolded person should start gently stroking both his
and the other person’s nose. About a minute after beginning to stroke
both noses, the blindfolded person more than half of the time will
report his nose being so long that it reaches the other person’s nose.
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