HN Explorer

Show HN: Quick Rewire – I made web tool to rewire your brain (quickrewire.com)

27 points by jarrenae ↗ HN
Hi HN, I work with a mixed group of developers, data scientists and neuroscientists, and for fun recently built a tool inspired by psychological studies. The idea is to demonstrate how quickly technology can change how your brain works, and potentially the impact that technology actually has over our agency without us even noticing.

17 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 48.6 ms ] thread
muhammadusman
Pretty amazing how quickly my brain just started thinking of the cursor going in the opposite direction. By the 5-7th trial, my hand and brain were pretty in sync. Then going back to the normal movement I was 0.41 seconds slower.
sumnern
did this twice -- didn't notice much effect the first time (measurable effect was tiny). When I did it again, I was distracted a bit (mind wandering) and sure enough, when I switched back to the "normal" control, my performance was destroyed. Surprisingly effective.
22c
> Whoa, backwards training actually made your reaction time faster by 0.28 seconds!

Interesting result. I think I may have subconsciously primed myself for a better performance as the prompt told me that it was about to go back to "normal".

I suspect I'd be a lot worse if it switched me without warning.

jarrenae
We considered removing the prompt, but I've found that it's interesting to intellectually know what to do with a familiar action, but be unable to do it to some small degree.

The reaction difference would theoretically be amplified over time, and if you were to take the test for 30+ minutes a few times a week, the impact would (again, theoretically) be greater.

audreyt
I also got a significant speedup after the rewire (without looking at the prompt.)

OTOH, I was consciously visualizing the mirrored position of the target circle on screen and navigating toward that without looking at the mouse cursor, so mentally it's exactly the same movement as the pre-rewire step.

22c
I think I did something similar, too...
mdrzn
"Whoa, backwards training actually made your reaction time faster by 0 seconds!"

Amazing results!

bopowers9
Thanks for giving it a try anyway! I helped make this project. Typically to make an intervention like this effective, you'd need to do hundreds of trials. We made the short version 25 trials in the hopes that more people would get to the end.
PrivateButts
Had some issues with my cursor just disappearing during trials, lead me to get a slower score by the end!
jarrenae
Very interesting. If you don't mind providing some more info, it'd really help us figure this out so others don't run into that problem.

What OS and browser were you using? What version? Did you happen to have any extensions running that disabled JS?

jayleemurf
I had the same issue! I just restarted the trial.
cbreynoldson
Cursor disappeared and I had to find a way to quit Chrome without it. Very frustrating.

Re: rewiring the brain - these exercises feel like functional neurology exercises, were they inspired by those? "Neuroplasticity" is just a fancy term for learning, really, and if you dig deep enough there are some niche communities online that (at least claim to) use it to heal themselves from various chronic illnesses. Very anecdotal, but lots of anecdotes.

I've always thought people in the "tools for thought" domain should explore this.

evancoop
Can someone rewire my brain to be hyper-efficient when clicking through articles on HN and dreadfully-inefficient if my mind wanders to fantasy sports?
jarrenae
if (distracted < 15000ms) { electrocute = 300ms; }
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
jarrenae
I'm glad people seemed to enjoy this.