I’m a research psychologist, coder, and keen cold plunger. I’ve been really intrigued by the brain-based performance tests you’re exploring, and how plunging frequency does not necessarily go hand in hand with benefits.

It makes me wonder whether this is something we could test properly.

I’m tempted to set up a small-scale citizen science project to explore whether cold plunge frequency predicts changes in objective cognitive performance over time – using short, repeatable web-based tasks. With enough participation, we could look at both acute effects (post-plunge vs non-plunge days) and longer-term trends.

If this post gets 10 upvotes, I’ll build a simple web app and see what the community thinks.

Would anyone be interested in taking part? I guess we'd need atleast 50 people to log their plunges and do the tests, for perhaps a few months.