Hands-On Experiments With Your Own Mind

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

• The Pinocchio Illusion: Trick your brain into feeling your nose grow using only vibration and touch.

• Arms Through the Floor: Discover how your body schema can be fooled by expectation.

• Online Attention Tasks: Join web-based experiments that show how we unconsciously treat eye gaze like a physical force.

• 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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