The curtain opens. An illusionist enters the scene and shows an empty bag, several spectators examined the bag without finding anything suspicious in it, after some magic tricks, the illusionist takes away an egg, how could I have done it?Is the hand faster than the eye?To answer these questions, we need to know more about the relationship between magic and the brain.
The relationship between magic and the brain has been studied for some time, when we talk about magic we talk about illusionism, not black magic, illusionism is an art, it is part of culture, such as painting, sculpture or literature. art of deceiving our senses, our brains, through hand games, colloquially called “things. “
Magic and brain are closely related. Magic is the illusion of perception and perception occurs in our brains.
It is curious: in a demonstration of illusionism, we welcome to be deceived. There’s a deal between the magician and the viewer. According to this pact, for the duration of the show, the viewer is willing to believe.
We know that magicians play with our minds at will and that magic is not real, yet we enjoy the moment. Neurologists and psychologists can find another use in the art of creating magical illusions. Do you study perception, attention, memory? In short, the limits of the brain.
Some scientists have already begun collaborating with magicians by unsymscending these two traditional and seemingly antagonistic disciplines: science and magic, and we say seemingly antagonistic because, in reality, they are not, magic and the brain are closely linked. Magic is the illusion of perception and perception occurs in our brains.
Scientists are trying to understand the neural correlates of illusions, they try to understand those moments when objective and subjective reality do not match, allowing them to clarify what operations and mechanisms we use to build the experience of reality.
Illusions exist, we see them, we appreciate them, but why do they exist?We could say that illusions exist by the limits of our brain, the brain is not infinite. Our brain has a maximum size because it has to adapt to the inside of the skull, plus it has a limited number of neurons and neural connections, so our perception, like other basic psychological processes, is limited.
The brain, in interpreting reality, takes shortcuts, does simulations and masks this reality, most of the time it does so effectively. Sometimes, however, when we recreate something that does not exist, what we call the illusion is born.
The brain is unable to process everything for several reasons, we start with two-dimensional images to assemble three-dimensional images in the brain, this is done statistically, looking for the most likely solution, which sometimes provokes illusions.
In addition, the brain is expensive and slow. It occupies only 3% of the body, but constantly consumes 30% of the energy, to solve this problem acts predictively, lives partly in the past and predicts the future to create the feeling of real time.
Let’s explain an experiment done by the wizard Mac King, this magician throws a coin with his right hand to the left, then opens the receiving hand, the left, and there is no coin, here we go. The reality is that the play never came out of the right hand, but the public could swear that he saw her making a trajectory through the air.
Why did this happen? First, the move the magician made is identical to what he would have made to tosss the royal coin; second, the neural mechanisms of implicit movement make us believe that we are seeing it; it’s kind of like pretending to throw a stick at a dog. , cheating on him. One way or another, the magician deceives us, just like the dog.
Another important problem is that the study of magic tricks is useful for scientists, it is clear that magic teaches things to scientists, but what do magicians get from this collaboration?They can become aware of the values of magic.
As we have seen, and this is not an illusion, magic serves science and science serves magic, our brain is imperfect and, thanks to this imperfection, is able to see what does not exist and not see what exists. Brains are closely related and without the brain there could be no magic.
If you want to know more about this topic, we recommend reading the book “Tricks of the Mind: What Does Magic Reveal About Our Brain?”, Whose authors are Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde.