The Neuroscience of Magic and the Human Brain (Research Paper APA)

8/10/2019 The Neuroscience of Magic and the Human Brain (Research Paper APA)

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Running head: THE NEUROSCIENCE OF MAGIC AND THE HUMAN BRAIN 1

The Neuroscience of Magic and the Human Brain

Saad Ben Elafdil

Al Akhawayn University

Technical Writing

Dr. Morey

12/16/2014


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THE NEUROSCIENCE OF MAGIC AND THE HUMAN BRAIN 2

Abstract

This research paper aims to explore, categorize and explain the characteristics of the human

brain that are used by magicians to fool their audiences successfully and that are now studied

by neuroscientists with the help of cooperating magicians. These characteristics will be

categorized through the two general types of magic effects that use them: visual illusions and

cognitive illusions. We will also see how magic can be more helpful to science than one

would like to think, and how the intuitive and ancient knowledge kept and preserved by

magicians is sometimes more advanced in the field of neuroscience than researchers, but how

this knowledge is however blunt and partial and needs to be studied employing more

scientific means to raise it to academic standards and create practical uses for it.


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Introduction

Magic is often said to be the second oldest job in the history of humanity as a joke.

However, it is actually considered to be one of the most ancient and most wide-spread forms

of performance art (Christopher, 2006, p. 23). Magicians have had thousands of years to

improve and perfect their craft, and have been studying intensively the human brains

weaknesses to do so.

Long before science even came close to studying this subject, magicians used trial-

and-error, educated guesses and informal experimenting to unravel the soft spots of the

human brain and use its underlying loopholesto trick it. Sadly, neuroscientists and

cognitive science researchers have been ignoring for too long the incredible resource that

magicians and their effects and illusions constitute when it comes to studying that topic

(Kuhn, 2008, p. 349).

However, progressively, magicians and neuroscientists have finally come together

during the last decade to cooperate on a research effort that is bound to produce great

discoveries about the human brain (Martinez-Conde, 2007). Using the instinctive knowledge

of magicians and allowing science to study its findings more rigorously will help us make a

significant leap forward in the field of neuroscience and, just as this paper aims to, answer the

question : what are the characteristics of the human brain that allow for it to be tricked or

trick itself ?

These loopholesare numerous; thus, in this paper, I will attempt to categorize and

explain them using some examples, using magic effects as examples when possible, based on

previous scholarly research along with personal knowledge and understanding.


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Methodology

This research paper is based on multiple scholarly sources and was inspired by a

scientific documentary (NOVA scienceNOW : How Does the Brain Work? (2011) by T.

Randall), along with personal interest. Copyrighted magic tricks will not be revealed, but

basic methods might be the object of an explained overview to exemplify how they make use

of the human brains characteristics. These flawswill be categorized using the various

types of magic tricks that use different kinds of our brains characteristics. Some examples of

our brains self-trickery without exterior input or influence will also be given.

Some Definitions and Principles in Magic

A magic effect is the act of creating the illusion of a supernatural event using only natural

means: The effect is the supernatural reality perceived by the spectator(s), whereas the

method is the real and natural mean employed by the magician in order to create the

effect (De Rujula, 1991, p. 351).

An action is a motion that has a purpose: A magician must and will justify unnatural

actions with a natural purpose to cover the secret move that might be behind it and

suppress doubts.

Apparent repetition, priming and closing all the doors: A magician must and will use

different methods when performing a trick multiple times, to disprove suspicions about a

specific method, or prime his audience before executing a trick using change blindness

(more details later).

Never do the same trick twice: Except if using different methods, a magician must not

and will not perform a specific trick more than once to the same audience, especially

when using inattentional blindness (more details later).


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Glossary

(Macknik, King, Randi, Robbins, Teller, Thompson, & Martinez-Conde, 2008, p. 876)

After-discharge: Sensory response of a neuron after a stimulus disappears.

Blindsight: Exhibiting good performance in visual tasks while being deprived of it.

Change blindness: Failure in noticing changes in an object or a situation over a period of

time.

Inattentional blindness: Failure to notice the presence of a noticeable object or action in a

scene because of an act of misdirection.

Magic palming technique: Technique used by magicians to conceal object in the palm of

their hands while making it appear to be empty.

Microsaccades: Unintentional small movements of the eye, when it tries to fixate on a

visual target.

Saccade: Fast, sudden eye movement transporting the gaze from one visual target to

another in a straight linear trajectory.

Smooth pursuit: Principle based on the attractiveness of a curved long movement to the

eye compared to a straight, fast and short movement (used by pickpockets to control the

victims attention away from the steal).

The Neuroscience of Magic and the Human Brain

Magic effects that rely on our brains double-edgedcharacteristics (and that means

most of them) are of two types: visual illusions, and cognitive illusions (Macknik et al., 2008,

p. 871).

Each of those categories include a myriad of different effects, each of which is

accomplishable with its different possible methods. We are here interested in the methods

that make use of the brains flaws to guarantee their success.


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Visual Illusions

First, we will start by observing visual illusions, which are easier to understand from a

purely scientific standpoint. Indeed, visual illusions are often used in neuroscience to

discover which part of the brain responds to the different kinds of visual stimulus. The fact

that the brain actively and directly reacts to these illusive stimuli makes it clear that the

trickery is not caused by a subjective perception, but rather by a physically observable neural

phenomenon. On the other hand, magicians use these visual illusions to achieve magic

effects, more often than not on stage.

An example of this kind of illusion would be a basic spoon bending trick. To achieve

the illusion that the spoon is bending, the magician holds the spoon horizontally and shakes it

in a vertical motion, making the neck of the spoon apparently flaccid and flexible. This tricks

mimics the Dancing Bar illusion, whose neural basis is that end-stopped neurons [] in the

primary visual cortex and the middle temporal visual area respond differently from non-end-

stopped neurons to oscillating stimuli (Macknik et al., 2008, p. 872). This difference in

response results in the illusion of spatial mislocalization between the different parts of the

rigid object.

Another example would be a quick-change trick by The Great Tomsoni. During his

routine, Tomsoni causes his assistant to instantaneously change her dress from a white to a

red one. To accomplish his effect, he uses the vision-retention phenomenon to fool his

audience into thinking the white dress hasnt been changed yet while it has been under the

cover of different lighting colors successively employed (white-red-dark-white) (Macknik et

al., 2008, p. 872). This shows a simple ocular feature of our neural system allows for our eyes

to be tricked. When the trickster is clever and creative enough with his effect, he can employ


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such a broadly known phenomenon without anyone guessing the method, although they

probably heard of it, or at least experienced it at some point in their life.

Finally, a last example of visual illusion used by magicians is Jerry Andruss Trizonal

Space Warp. The illusions consists in asking the audience to stare at a spinning disk with

three zones of expanding and contracting motions. They are then asked to look at a different

object on stage that consequently seems to both expand and contract (Macknik et al., 2008,

p. 872). This illusion is called by neuroscientists The Waterfall Illusion and is the oldest

recorded visual illusion, as it was first studied by Aristotle in his Parva Naturalia. This

indicates how extremely ancient discoveries about the human brain can be used successfully

in magic to trick an audience that remains more often than not clueless as to what method

was employed to trick them. Most of Andruss audience even think they were victims of a

grand-scale hypnosis by the magician without them realizing it.

Visual illusions are the least complicated ones used by magicians, and most

illusionists are nowadays reticent to using them in their routines as most of them have been

exposed by scientific research. However, some creative minds in the field of magic have no

reticence as to using them, as long as they hide them by creating a more complicated effect,

using storylines or misdirection to catch the spectator off-guard and make him ignore the

sometimes obvious method by engaging them totally in the effect itself.

On the other hand, magicians use a more complicated form of neurological loopholes

in their tricks to fool audiences more safely and more effectively. Indeed, cognitive illusions

is most probably the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to effective and invisible trick

methodology.


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Cognitive Illusions

The main difference between visual illusion and cognitive illusions would be that

cognitive illusions are inherently not sensory, but rather, as their name indicates, highly

cognitive. They involve high-level cognitive functions, such as attention and causal

inference (Macknik et al., 2008, p. 872). Most close-up magic tricks use at least in part this

kind of methodology.

Cognitive illusions utilize the average human brains short and volatile attention span,

our imprinted assumptions about causality and time, and the basic or complex psychological

principles that make us so prone to manipulation. This makes these illusions infinitely more

discreet than visual illusions who can be easier to decipher. But these characteristics also

make these illusions harder to study by neuroscientists as the neurological phenomena they

are based on are less studied and often part of the unknown parameters of the human brain.

However, scientists in the field of neurophysiology and a handful of willing

magicians are coming together to uncover the mechanisms behind this type of illusions and

have managed to categorize them into four different categories that we will now describe and

explain.

The first type of cognitive illusions rest on the principles of inattentional blindness

and change blindness. These two phenomena relate respectively to when an object or an

action happening in full-view is missed or ignored by the spectator who is focusing on

other actions or objects, and to when a spectator misses or ignores a major change in a

situation or an objects state that happens right in front of his yes, but under the cover of a

transient interruption, such as a blink, a saccadic eye movement or a flicker of the scene

(Macknik et al., 2008, p. 873). The most famous example of inattentional blindness is

probably the renowned video in which the viewer is asked to count the passes executed by a


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basketball team, and in which the gorilla passing through the middle of the scene (and

stopping in the middle to beat on his chest) goes most usually unnoticed by the viewer.

In magic, inattentional blindness is used in tricks when the magician keeps the

spectators attention directed at a part of the effect while the secret action constituting the

method happens in full-view, only to be ignored. An example would be a lapping trick, which

consists of an effect during which an object is apparently vanished, whereas it has simply

been dropped by the magician on his lap under the cover of a misdirection.

On the other hand, change blindness can be used in tricks where the spectator gets

used to a situation and takes it for granted, while the magician uses this assumption to

change the situation during an off-beat (moment of distraction or relaxation, during which

the spectators expects nothing magical to happen). An example would be a classic

Vanishing-Ball illusion. In one of the most famous renditions of this trick, the magician

makes the ball disappear mid-air, by throwing it a couple of times in the air and catching,

creating an expectation in the spectators mind for him to truly throw it up, and then only

pretends to throw it, keeping it concealed in his hand. The spectator, based on his

expectations, sees the ball fly up and then vanish mid-flight. Trying to study the spectators

ocular movements proved to be inconclusive, and shows that the illusion in completely

cognitive and not sensory in any way (Macknik et al., 2008, p. 873).

However, to sell the effect more effectively, the magician mimics watching the ball

fly up on the last throw the same exact way he watched it on the previous throws. He uses

social cues like body and head movement, along with what might one of the most powerful

and discreet social cues: gaze control. Using his eyes to follow the imaginary thrown ball, he

indicates implicitly where to look to the spectator, who follows his gaze. Gaze cues are an

extremely powerful tool for magicians, thanks to its very natural and subtle nature. Humans


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look where the people theyre interacting with look without thinking about it (Kuhn, Tatler &

Cole, 2009, p. 926). You can try it during a conversation by looking somewhere in the

vicinity and see for yourself that your interlocutor(s) will probably follow your gaze. Gaze

cues are also used in cinematography (look-space and focus) to indicate to the viewer where

to look without making the indication too overt and obvious.

The second type of cognitive illusion methodology is simply misdirection. It is

probably the most used one, as it is somehow part of almost any magic trick. Indeed,

misdirection is part of the basic definition of a magical effect that was given earlier in this

paper. The magician needs to pull away the attention of the spectator from the method to the

effect to achieve any trick. Misdirection, or attention control, is attained using a plethora of

principles. These principles are used by the magician to control the audiences bottom-up

and/or top-down attentional control mechanics (Macknik et al., 2008, p. 875). Different

methods used to control audience attention include, but are not limited to, using salient

objects (high contrast, new, unusual, moving) to cover discreet actions or the movement of a

less salient object (e.g. producing a dove and letting it fly to ditch the gimmick (prop) that

allowed for its production while audience attention is focused on the dove), using the smooth

pursuit principle (for pickpockets and coin tricks), or introducing two simultaneous actions

(beginning the one to cover right after the misdirecting one, as the first action happening in a

short lapse attracts more attention). It is also important to note that misdirection does not only

happen in space but also in time, as magicians will often shift their audiences attention away

from key-moments of the methodology of a trick by creating off-beats and favoring key-

moments of the effect itself.

The third type of cognitive illusions is based on memory illusions and illusory

correlations. This type of methodology consists of creating false memories of a trick in a

spectators mind (this can even lead to memories of events that never even happened) by


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enhancing the memorability of specific favored and salient events and lowering that of a less

salient moment that shouldnt be remembered (Demacheva, Ladouceur, Steinberg,

Pogossova, & Raz, 2012, p. 547), or making the spectator incorrectly link unrelated causes

and effects, by using either chronological causality, subjective weighting of information,

spectators expectancies and stereotypes, and selective attention control (Macknik et al.,

2008, p. 876).

Finally, the last type of cognitive illusions is an additional kind of misdirection: social

misdirection. It is mostly used by pickpockets, but also by magicians, to create an illusion of

trust. It relies on persuasion skills, social engineering, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming),

body language, eye-contact, haptic science (science of touch), proxemics (science of personal

space), effective misdirection and many other sources of knowledge. This is an inherent and

extremely important part of magic in itself, as what is a good magician but a person who

makes you truly believe the impossible happened before your very eyes (Freudenburg &

Alario, 2007, p. 149). Magicians create a conditional trust between them and their audience

based on acts of apparent honesty and seemingly logical argumentation.

Conclusion

In a cooperative effort of scientific discovery, magicians finally agreed in the last

decade to start helping scientists uncover more of the secrets of the human brain. Whereas

laymen are most usually interested in discovering the method behind the magic, magicians

and neuroscientists interests lie in unraveling the science behind the method itself, as the

method doesnt explain everything, but has the potential to explain a lot more than the trick

itself. The potential advances this combined research might offer arent only leaps in

scientific knowledge about the human brain and its secrets, but also have practical

applications in our world. Apart from the potential inventions and cures that might come


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from learning more about the human brain, the therapy and counseling field of mental health

are also benefiting from this research already, and counselors are starting to use principles

used by magicians to help their patients more effectively (Echterling, Presbury & Cowan,

2012).


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Reference List

-

Christopher, M. & Christopher, M. (2006). The Illustrated History of Magic.Carroll

& Graf, New York.

- De Rujula, A. (1991). The bangs of a magician's brain.Nature, 351(6329), 706.

- Demacheva, I., Ladouceur, M., Steinberg, E., Pogossova, G., & Raz, A. (2012). The

Applied Cognitive Psychology of Attention: A Step Closer to Understanding Magic

Tricks.Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26(4), 541-549. doi:10.1002/acp.2825

- Echterling, L. G., Presbury, J., & Cowan, E. (2012). Neuroscience, Magic, and

Counseling.Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 7(4), 330-342.

doi:10.1080/15401383.2012.739947

-

Freudenburg, W. R., & Alario, M. (2007). Weapons of Mass Distraction:

Magicianship, Misdirection, and the Dark Side of Legitimation.Sociological Forum,

22(2), 146-173. doi:10.1111/j.1573-7861.2007.00011.x

- Kuhn, G., Amlani, A. A., & Rensink, R. A. (2008). Towards a science of magic.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(9), 349-354. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.05.008

- Kuhn, G., Tatler, B. W., & Cole, G. G. (2009). You look where I look! Effect of gaze

cues on overt and covert attention in misdirection. Visual Cognition, 17(6/7), 925-

944. doi:10.1080/13506280902826775

- Macknik, S. L., King, M., Randi, J., Robbins, A., Teller, Thompson, J., & Martinez-

Conde, S. (2008). Attention and awareness in stage magic: turning tricks into

research.Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(11), 871-879. doi:10.1038/nrn2473

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Martinez-Conde, S., & Macknik, S. L. (2007). Science in culture: Mind tricks.

Nature, 448(7152), 414. doi:10.1038/448414a


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-

Randall, T. (Producer). (2001, September 14).NOVA scienceNOW: How Does the

Brain Work? [Television Series Episode]. Distributed by PBS.

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The Neuroscience of Magic and the Human Brain (Research Paper APA)