11.21.2014
Written By: Bryan Baxter
Our brains change continuously – they change based on all of our experiences, what we see, hear, taste, learn, and how we feel, among other experiences. With today’s experiment, the students learned about the brain and brain adaptation to altered sensory perception. We started with a brief talk on the brain, what it does, and how it can change and then broke into groups to be more active – the students performed the classic game of bean bag toss, throwing bean bags at a target and scoring points based on how close to the center each bean bag landed. In order to alter their visual perception, the students put on prism goggles, which shifted their entire visual field 20 degrees to the right – where if before they saw the target directly in front of them, they now see it shifted to the right even though the actual position has not changed. This led them to throwing the bean bags to the right, initially, then over the course of a few throws, correcting their throws to hit the target again. Over the entire class, the data illustrated quite well what the goggles were doing. The students saw how fast the brain adapts to new sensory input and how rapid it can correct their motor output to correct for this change in visual input.
I have done a similar experiment as a demonstration to elementary and middle school students but not full-fledged experiments where we can collect data from an entire class and actually analyze the results to see the effect. After their initial experiments in small groups, the students discussed what they thought was happening and changed variables, such as the distance to the target and the length of time with the goggles on, to investigate how these changes affected their throws. While illustrating our plastic brains was the primary goal of the experiment, it also allowed the students to release some excess energy on a Friday afternoon tossing bean bags, which was good for everyone.