Whilst listening to The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe on my way down to my house in France, I was particularly pleased that they interviewed Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde. They are a married couple who work at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, where they study visual, sensory and cognitive neuroscience. They are also members of the Magic Circle and have written a new book that explains how magicians (and dodgy salesmen, TV psychics and other charismatic individuals) can fool our senses so easily.
The website for their book, Sleights Of Mind, says the following…
Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, the founders of the exciting new discipline of neuromagic, have convinced some of the world’s greatest magicians to allow scientists to study their techniques for tricking the brain. This book is the result of the authors’ yearlong, world-wide exploration of magic and how its principles apply to our behaviour. Magic tricks fool us because humans have hardwired processes of attention and awareness that are hackable—a good magician uses your mind’s own intrinsic properties against you in a form of mental jujitsu.
Now magic can reveal how our brains work in everyday situations. For instance, if you’ve ever bought an expensive item you’d sworn you’d never buy, the salesperson was probably a master at creating the “illusion of choice,” a core technique of magic. The implications of neuromagic go beyond illuminating our behaviour; early research points to new approaches for everything from the diagnosis of autism to marketing techniques and education. Sleights of Mind makes neuroscience fun and accessible by unveiling the key connections between magic and the mind.
Their website is worth a browse as it has lots of videos to watch (such as this one). I have included one of my favourites below. It is of a magician called Omar Pasha performing on television. Normally I prefer close-up magic with everyday objects, but this chap really knows how to put on a show!
Just as an aside, what is the piece of music playing in this video and who was its composer?
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