|
Untitled Document
|
| Not a member yet? Register
for full benefits! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion
This story is from the category The Brain
Date posted: 07/05/2009
Now that on-the-job experimentation has taken an academic turn. A couple of years ago, Teller joined a coterie of illusionists and tricksters recruited by Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, researchers at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, to look at the neuroscience of magic. Last summer, that work culminated in an article for the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience called "Attention and Awareness in Stage Magic." Teller was one of the coauthors, and its publication was a signal event in a field some researchers are calling magicology, the mining of stage illusions for insights into brain function.
"Tricks work only because magicians know, at an intuitive level, how we look at the world," says Macknik, lead author of the paper. "Even when we know we're going to be tricked, we still can't see it, which suggests that magicians are fooling the mind at a very deep level." By reverse-engineering these deceptions, Macknik hopes to illuminate the mental loopholes that make us see a woman get sawed in half or a rabbit appear out of thin air even when we know such stuff is impossible. "Magicians were taking advantage of these cognitive illusions long before any scientist identified them," Martinez-Conde says.
See the full Story via external site: www.wired.com
Most recent stories in this category (The Brain):
25/05/2013: Scientists develop worm EEG to test the effects of drugs
25/05/2013: Clouds in the head: New Model of Thought Processes
25/05/2013: Brain Can Be Trained in Compassion, Study Shows
22/05/2013: Physicist's Tool Has Potential for Brain Mapping
22/05/2013: UCSB Study Shows Where Scene Context Happens in our Brain
17/05/2013: Brain-Imaging Study Links Cannabinoid Receptors to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder —Findings Bring First Pharmaceutical Treatment for Ptsd Within Reach—
17/05/2013: Brain rewires itself after damage or injury, life scientists discover
15/05/2013: Human Brain Cells Developed in Lab, Grow in Mice
|
|
