Fun Experiments To Do On Your Brain
by Steve Gillman

Ready for some fun experiments on your brain? Don't worry, you can try these at home. They are perfectly safe, and they will help you demonstrate brainpower.

Fun Experiments 1. Sing to access your right brain. It is easier to rhyme when you're singing, because you are working from the part of your brain that recognizes patterns (usually the right hemisphere). Try a singing experiment. First try making a rhyming poem about something that happened today. Work on this for just a minute or two. Then try it again, but sing the poem as you make it up. Most people find that they can easily find rhyming words when singing. You can also make a song up to remember things. Singing may help to activate your right-brain when you are working on a problem involving spatial reasoning. This last suggestion is speculative, but it can be a fun experiment to try, and no harm should come from singing.

2. Consciously control autonomic body functions.

Your pupils get bigger when it is darker, but they also get bigger when you see something you like. In fact, they get larger if you just vividly imagine something you like. Try this experiment right now. Go to the mirror and watch your eyes as you imagine someone you like, a favorite food, or anything you would like to see.

You should see your pupils quickly grow in size. Imagine different scenes to see which work best. With practice, you can train yourself to consciously change your pupil size at will. Looking towards a light in the room will make your pupils smaller again, by the way. There are ways to use this eye-trick, but for our now, it is just a way to demonstrate how you can consciously control what is normally an unconscious body function. (There are also techniques for controling the heart rate as well.)

3. Try fun experiments to motivate yourself.

Ever feel like you just can't work, or your brain just won't wake up? Try a simple experiment on yourself. Simply talk about your plans, or anything you are passionate about. When I'm stuck staring at the keyboard, I might talk about the next mountain I am going to climb here in Colorado, and suddenly I have the mental energy to get back to writing.

Try different topics, because what works for each of us will be different. You can even try this experiment on friends. When they are in a bad mood, have them explain something to you that they are passionate about. The process will change the chemicals in their brains, and so change their state of mind. Experiment to find the topics that work best - for them and yourself - and remember them for future use.

Fun experiments or just useful ones? Either way, there is no harm in trying these and other simple experiments to learn how to better use your brain.