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Students -
Young Professionals -
2 h.
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English
Hands-On Experiments With Your Own Mind
What if you could feel your brain constructing reality in real time? In this hands-on workshop, you’ll step inside the strange illusions that reveal how consciousness works. Using only simple tools, we’ll trick the brain into believing your nose is growing, show how your body map can be bent and stretched, and explore online experiments that prove we unconsciously sense eye gaze as a real force. By the end, you won’t just understand the science of consciousness — you’ll have experienced it yourself.
About This Workshop
Constructing Consciousness: Hands-On Experiments With Your Own Mind
Your brain doesn’t just process the world — it builds it. In this interactive workshop, you’ll explore how consciousness itself arises from models the brain creates of the body and attention. You’ll experience strange illusions firsthand and see real data collected by students this summer in public and online experiments.
From Illusion to Insight
Consciousness can feel mysterious, but it follows scientific and evolutionary first principles. We’ll use simple hands-on setups — no lab required — to uncover how your brain generates the feeling of self. Alongside these live explorations, you’ll connect with online experiments that reveal surprising truths about how we perceive attention, gaze, and awareness.
Experiments You’ll Try
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The Pinocchio Illusion: Trick your brain into feeling your nose grow using only vibration and touch.
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Arms Through the Floor: Discover how your body schema can be fooled by expectation.
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Online Attention Tasks: Join web-based experiments that show how we unconsciously treat eye gaze like a physical force.
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The Eyes Effect: See data showing how simply placing pictures of eyes can dramatically change people’s honesty in real-world settings.
For All Skill Levels
No neuroscience background is needed. Whether you’re a student, educator, technologist, or simply curious, you’ll follow step-by-step instructions and engage with experiments that are fun, strange, and thought-provoking.
Why It Matters
Understanding how your mind works changes how you see yourself — and, in a post-AI world, sharpens how we think about what truly makes humans unique. By the end of this workshop, you’ll leave with a new perspective on consciousness: not as magic, but as a model your brain evolved to predict reality.
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