How Magicians Trick the Mind

Summary
Magicians are masters at attention and awareness. They have the ability to control what what people are aware of andwhat they are not. They do this by creating visual and optical illusions. But perhaps the most pivotal tool, is the ability to make cognitive illusions. Cognitive illusions are like visual illusions in the way that both cover one's perception of physicalm reality. They are different from visual illusions in the sense that they are based on things sensory in nature. These include attention, memory, and and casual interference. With the ability to use these illusions, magicians make it almost impossible to figure out what is actually going on.

Neuroscientists are interested in understanding cognitive functions to learn how to make better experiments and to create more effective visual and cognitive illusions for learning about the neural bases of attention and awareness. They hope that a better understanding of these things will lead to diagnostic and treatment options for people who suffer from cognitive disorders such as deficits resulting from brain trauma, attention disorders, and maybe even Alzheimers. The treatment for these disorders might be able to "trick" the patients into focusing on the things they normally can't pay attention to, and tune out the distractions. Just like a magician makes his audience focus on what he wants them to.

Magicians use the practice of turning a person's focus away from a secret action called "misdirection." This causes viewers' attention to go to the effect of an action instead of the action or the cause of the action. Magicians, however, can also use a method called covert misdirection. This allows the audience to look at a method behind a trick and be completely oblivious to it. One type of covert misdirection is called change blindness, meaning that people don't notice something different about a scene. Studies show that it doesn't even have to be a small change to a scene. If people are really concentrating on something, a huge change can be right in their line of vision, and they still can fail to notice it. Magicians like to use this method.

Also, Magicians play with your head by triggering circuts in your brain. If a magician pretends to throw a ball, all eyes go to where the people thought the ball should have landed. This must mean that implied and real motions activate similar neural circuits in one's brain. Perhaps that is why illusions feel so real. There are many other ways that magicians can play with people's heads, and if neuroscientists can learn to use the same methods, they too could could control awareness. And if they manage to link awareness to the functioning of neurons, they will have the power to discover some mysteries of the consciousness.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?=magic-and-the-brain

My Thoughts

I thought this article was intersting because it shed some light about how magicians can play with your mind. I never thought of studying a magicians tricks to figure out key principles of my own mind before. I also thought it was cool that scientists are studying some methods that magicians use to people with cognitive disorders. Who knows? Maybe cognitive therapy will be the next type careerthat people will be encouraged to get into.