“There is a place for magic in science. Five years ago, on a trip to Las Vegas, neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde realized that a partnership was in order with a profession that has an older and more intuitive understanding of how the human brain works. Magicians, it seems, have an advantage over neuroscientists.
“Scientists have only studied cognitive illusions for a few decades. Magicians have studied them for hundreds, if not thousands, of years,” Martinez-Conde told the audience during a recent presentation here at the New York Academy of Sciences. [Video: Your Brain on Magic]
She and Macknik, her husband, use illusions as a tool to study how the brain works. Illusions are revealing, because they separate perception from reality. Magicians take advantage of how our nervous systems — our eyes, sense of touch, minds and so on — are wired to create seemingly impossible illusions.
After their epiphany in Las Vegas, where they were preparing for a conference on consciousness, the duo, who both direct laboratories at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona, teamed up with magicians to learn just how they harness the foibles of our brains. Their discoveries are detailed in their new book, “Sleight of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions” (Henry Holt and Company, 2010).
The psychological concepts behind illusions are generally better understood, but they treat the brain as something of a black box, without the insight into brain activity or anatomy that neuroscience can offer, they write.”
Read more at Live Science
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