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How Magic Routines Trick The Brain..

How Magic Routines Trick The Brain..

Magic is about misdirection and sleight-of-hand. Magicians twirl the fingers of one hand to distract you as they flick it away with the other. Or, on a larger scale, they distract you with a curtain and lights to make the Statue of Liberty seem to disappear.

In the past decade, researchers have begun devoting serious study to explaining how these routines trick our brains. And some of them are now stripping magic tricks down to their bare essentials, to isolate and describe how they “hack” the very mental processes that help us understand the world.

In new research published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, a group of psychologists recruited 420 participants to watch several short, silent videos on their computers and report on what they saw. Read more…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/10/this-magic-trick-can-make-you-see-something-thats-not-actually-there/

The science of magic tricks: From misdirection to ‘pausing’ time, experts reveal how their illusions mess with our minds..

The science of magic tricks: From misdirection to ‘pausing’ time, experts reveal how their illusions mess with our minds..

– Neuroscientists explain how the art of misdirection works on our brains
– Also explain how by multitasking, the audience is unable to focus on detail
– Using comedy or gory images also dominates the viewers’ attention
– Techniques are used by magicians to divert attention from ‘the tell’

A magician must make a trick look effortless, but it’s very unlikely that anything is casual or spontaneous in a magic show.

Just as you might go to a ballet and imagine the sweat and tears needed to achieve amazing dance moves, magic is choreographed but mustn’t look like it is.

Artists of all kinds, including magicians, are connoisseurs of human behaviour and perception and now neuroscientists have revealed just how their tricks mess with our brains. Read more… (Very interesting article)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3412382/The-science-magic-tricks-misdirection-pausing-time-experts-reveal-illusions-mess-minds.html