Brain(less) Tricks

May 24th, 2007 at 4:46 am · DrHGuy · 1 Comment

What All The Cool Online Geeks Are Doing¹

If you have noticed an unusual number of folks sitting at computers while flailing their limbs about in what appears to be a particularly awkward version of the hokey-pokey, you have not happened onto a colony of cyber-practitioners of an obscure and spectacularly ineffective marital art. Nor have you witnessed the results of a pandemic of a neurological disorder.

Chances are that you have observed individuals performing various brain tricks that are currently making the rounds on blogs and social bookmarking sites.

My motivation for posting these proprioceptive puzzlers at Heck Of A Guy today is purely educational and certainly has nothing to do with any alleged amusement I might garner from envisioning the Duke of Derm, Mrs Linklater, or Lady Lawanda attempting these maneuvers.

The Prototypical Brain Trick

The Ground Zero of this catastrophic meme appears to be what I herewith name the “Circle Six,”² which appeared on the internet no later than August 1, 2003. The wording at that time, which has been preserved in the amber of many, many blogs, follows:

1. While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.
2. Now, while doing this, draw the number “6″ in the air with your right hand.

Your foot will change direction and there’s nothing you can do about it.³

Heck Of A Guy Notes On The Circle Six Brain Trick

If your foot does not change direction,

Did you perform both acts simultaneously?⁴
Did you move your right foot and right hand?⁵
You do realize that it’s the right foot that should change direction, don’t you?
Did you draw the “6″ like a normal human being (i.e. starting at the top of the figure and proceeding in a counterclockwise direction)? Starting at the bottom won’t work. If you used Roman numerals, just go to your room and think about the fact that no one likes a smartass.
Were you sitting at a desk? I don’t know why this makes a difference but it’s in all the instructions.
Have you severed your corpus callosum?⁶
Are you actually proud that you are some kind of freak doomed to die at an early age of spinal cord explosion?

Explanations of this phenomenon include gravitational fields, rotation of the earth, neurological anomalies, right brain-left brain variations, etc. It’s actually caused by global warming, which explains why Aristotle didn’t address it.

Some folks can pull off the trick the first time they try. Anyone can “learn” to do it by training oneself to automatically make the motions without consciously directing them (think juggling).

Variations

Opposing Bicycle Wheels

Imagine yourself on a bicycle. With one hand, trace a circle one foot in diameter in front of you in the same direction the bicycle wheel would move going forward. [Once this is accomplished, you can forget the bike.] While continuing that motion, trace another circle with your other hand going the opposite direction.

Twirling Fingers

Holding your hands steady except for the index fingers, rotate both index fingers clockwise. Start slowly, then build up speed. At some point as the speed increases, the fingers will tend to rotate in opposite directions.

Footnotes

This may be my first heading that contains both a redundancy and an oxymoron. I’m so proud↩
There is no consistent scheme of names I can discover for either the individual tricks or the general phenomenon↩
This last line, “Your foot will change direction and there’s nothing you can do about it,” seems to have been part and parcel of the prototype instructions but is, in my judgment, a mistake. First, it is inaccurate; one could, for example, hire a voluptuous 21 year old Swedish woman to grasp ones ankle and assure that it continues to circle in a clockwise direction. Or, one could hire a 21 year old Brazilian woman, … . The line also sets up a challenge, making the exercise a confrontation that will, no doubt, eventually end in bloodshed.↩
Yep, believe it or not, this mistake has been made↩
And yes, this mistake has also been made↩
If so, did you have this done to pull off this silly brain trick? Just curious.↩