Unlocking Your Brain’s Potential: A Simple Experiment to Boost Performance

How about a quick and easy performance-related brain experiment to kick off this March weekend? 

Open and close your right hand slowly three times. Now, close your eyes and IMAGINE making these same movements. Really focus on how it would feel to perform this action, but DON’T ACTUALLY MOVE! Easy enough, right?

The short clip below shows a bird’s eye view (nose pointed toward the top of the screen) of what your brain was doing when you were imagining. Just like actually moving your right hand, activity is predominantly on the left side of the brain and the specific circuits involved are those that translate our thoughts into hand actions. 

Ok, I am no George Lucas. I put this together with data from a research study we did way back in the last millennium because it illustrates something intriguing.

When we exercise these circuits through targeted imagery exercises done in a structured and consistent fashion, these brain circuits are strengthened through neuroplasticity. This is why imagery is capable of enhancing skill learning, efficiency, and even strength. (As an aside, our work has shown that even people with certain forms of paralysis, and even limb loss, often retain these imagery abilities; a story for another time.)

Imagining is not special. Every single one of our perceptions, thoughts, emotions, memories, decisions, and actions arises from brain physiology. Just as circulation is a product of our beating hearts, our minds are the product of brain activity. 

While a lot remains to be learned, we are now at a point where we can be leveraging neuroscience to improve how we perform in sport, work, and in life.

Over the next decade, I predict that the biggest gains in human performance will come from the largely untapped brain sciences.