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Brain switching

astrojax69

02:18 / 05.12.05

how fast does your brain switch? non comprehend? try the test on this link and go have a look at jack pettigrew's site.

jack was a princeton neuroscientist of note, had richard feynman pop by his office often, and i heard him speak last week. he is involved in a research grant appl'n my centre is doing, partly based on this work of brain switches. deeply intriguing...

basically, everyone's brain switches from left brain to right brain and back again, no matter the sensory input, and it is all regulated by own innate 'clock' hypothesised by feynman. jack thinks this switch, if he is right, is a key element of uncovering that chronometer! and the left / right brain dichotomies are wonderfully complementary. much great work on how thought happens going on here...

so, how does barbelith switch? fast slow middle?

Elbereth

15:51 / 05.12.05

i'm a four. molecular bio major, ADD. pretty average I guess. Who else?

grant

20:31 / 05.12.05

I have no friends to time me and my watch is analog. Fine if I'm paying attention to the second hand, but not so good when I have to be putting my brain elsewhere.

Mirror

21:13 / 05.12.05

On my first attempt, I ended up at 5, squarely in the middle of the average range, but I felt like my result was skewed by having accidentally read what the results were supposed to mean prior to taking the test.

I ended up taking the test multiple times, and found it fairly easy to control the results. If I put my mind into a medatative state, I can cause the dots to simply disappear and never reappear until my alarm rings; if I instead consciously make myself attentive to a single dot I can make the other dots flash on and off at will.

It reminded me of a game I used to play on long car trips as a kid - I would stare at and through specks of dirt on the windows of the car and make them fade in and out of my vision by changing what I was concentrating on and the depth at which I was focusing my eyes.

Evil Scientist

08:03 / 06.12.05

Maths nerd, with a marvellous score of 4. Although I'm not what I would consider to be a master of mathematics. I must be using my brain to concentrate on other thing, Buffy and Star Trek re-runs most likely.

It's a fascinating piece of neurobiology. I wonder if the switching time is something that naturally adjusts depending on what you do. What would the switching pattern of a mathematician, who could also dance at a professional level, look like?

Cheap. Easy. Cruel.

15:46 / 06.12.05

Interesting. My brain switched once. I am an engineer by trade, so I suppose that is right in line.

astrojax69

22:31 / 06.12.05

What would the switching pattern of a mathematician, who could also dance at a professional level, look like?

well, evil, if such a thing were to exist we should get legba rex to hunt it down with her left clik/right clik gun...

seriously, jack showed a slide in his talk that had the curve for a participant who had lsd in his system when tested and it was a seismic mess! this person's curve a day or so later was much more regular, though the sense of the curve and how they switched remained constant!

the thesis is that the clock we have regulates everything, so the relation in switch rates across all your faculties affected by this biological phenomenon is constant. cool.

grant

00:17 / 07.12.05

OK, I *think* I got 4, but it was a little odd -- only one dot at a time seemed to vanish, sort of like a wave (bottom then top). Both were gone briefly for at most twice.

O ho, but I suppose that means all three dots were visible five times (if you count the starting moment. I think. Strange illusion.

astrojax69

01:08 / 07.12.05

grant, any dots at all disappearing is significant - 'cause in reality the dots remain static. the number of dots disappear will depend on your fixation capacity and where in the midst of the triangle you focus...

disappear = left brain active,
dots there = right brain active

funky, huh?

quixote

01:52 / 07.12.05

Fascinating (said Mr. Spock). Neurobiology is way cool.

As for my results, I didn't get any. I don't wear glasses and have noticed before that compared to a lot of people I have more peripheral vision than most. So none of the dots ever disappeared. If I can convince myself I don't care about the other dots, then they vanish, but it takes me more than 30 sec to talk myself into it. Hmph.

elene

08:10 / 08.12.05

Did it once and it switched only once. That would fit, but then I read grant's post and astrojax reply and decided to try it again. This time I focused intently on the upper, left-hand yellow dot and noted each disappearing yellow dot. I found it switched at least six times. It seems very dependant on exactly how narrowly one focuses?

gravitybitch

03:54 / 05.01.06

Fun! I seem to get between 7 and 9 disappearances, though some of those are bare flickers. The weird thing is that one of the dots will disappear, and then another one will go away, but sometimes they come back at the same time and other times they come back individually. Not sure *what* that indicates...

Quantum

09:54 / 05.01.06

I got a cycling disappearance, the top right would disappear then the bottom, then both would be there (tick!) then the top right would go again, weird.
I got 8-9, so I'm like the greatest dancer, right? *sings* I'm the greatest dancer, doo-doo doo do

I'm fascinated by this, ever since I was a kid I'd ask people how our brains sense time passing, and it wasn't until undergrad neuroscience I got an answer. Feynmann's a hero of mine too, so it looks like I'll be researching brain switching...

Saltation

11:27 / 16.02.06

i found my results varied according to my objective, as i tried a couple of experiments after noticing i could switch off either of the two dots separately.

first time, without any goal: 12

second time, attempting to never see the dots: 0

third time, attempting to always see the dots: 1 (ie, the dots appearing. i guess you could also describe this as 0)

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