Examples of Magic Inspiring Science
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
Magic and the Brain: How Magicians “Trick” the Mind
“Neuroscientists are scrutinizing magic tricks to learn how they can be put to work in experimental studies that probe aspects of consciousness not necessarily grounded in current sensory reality.”
NATURE REVIEWS NEUROSCIENCE
Attention and Awareness in Stage Magic: Turning Tricks Into Research“By studying magicians and their techniques, neuroscientists can learn powerful methods to manipulate attention and awareness in the laboratory.
PEERJ NEUROSCIENCE
Perceptual Elements in Penn & Teller’s “Cups And Balls” Magic Trick“Magic illusions provide the perceptual and cognitive scientist with a toolbox of experimental manipulations and testable hypotheses about the building blocks of conscious experience.”
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
The Psychology of Magic and the Magic of Psychology
“Magicians have dazzled audiences for many centuries; however, few researchers have studied how, let alone why, most tricks work. The psychology of magic is a nascent field of research that examines the underlying mechanisms that conjurers use to achieve enchanting phenomena, including sensory illusions and misdirection of attention.”
A Framework for Using Magic to Study the Mind
“Over the centuries, magicians have developed extensive knowledge about the manipulation of the human mind—knowledge that has been largely ignored by psychology.”
CURRENT BIOLOGY
There’s More to Magic Than Meets the Eye“Our perception of an event is often modulated by our past experience and expectations. Here we used a magic trick to demonstrate how magicians can distort our subjective perception and we investigate the mechanisms behind this deception.”
Magic and Cognitive Neuroscience
“Neuroscientists have shown an increasing interest in magic. One reason for this is the parallels that can be drawn between concepts that have long been discussed in magic theory, particularly misdirection, and those that are routinely studied in cognitive neuroscience, such as attention and, as argued in this essay, different forms of memory.
JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
From The Stage To The Laboratory: Magicians, Psychologists, and The Science Of Illusion“In 1894, French psychologist Alfred Binet published an article on the psychology of conjuring. By observing five magicians perform in his laboratory, he was hoping to gain a better understanding of the psychological processes responsible for inducing illusions in an audience.”
BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP
Ideas, Emotions, and Innovation: Riding the Amazement Cycle
“The theme of TED’s 2018 conference, “The Age of Amazement,” reflects the momentous innovation and change going on around us. Taking this cue, we examine the dynamic interplay of logic and emotion that unfolds when we encounter something new, and attempt to extract some hints for how leaders can understand and harness it.”SCIENCEDIRECT
Imaging the impossible: An fMRI study of impossible causal relationships in magic tricks
This study uses magic-trick perception as a means of investigating violations of relationships that are long-established, deterministic, and that form part of an established belief system.WIRED / SCIENCE
Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion
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.PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY
Where is the ball? Behavioral and neural responses elicited by a magic trick
“Altogether, our results show how new insights into sensory and cognitive processing can be obtained using adapted magic tricks.”
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
“In recent years, a body of research that regards the scientific study of magic performances as a promising method of investigating psychological phenomena in an ecologically valid setting has emerged.”
“Drawing inspiration from sleight-of-hand magic tricks, we developed an experimental paradigm to investigate whether magicians’ misdirection techniques could be used to induce the misperception of ‘phantom’ objects.”
NEW YORK TIMES
Sleights of Mind (Teller)UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA – ARCHITECTURE
Magic and Architecture“This course will expose students to the many productive parallels between architecture and magic. Both architects and magicians employ props (bricks and boxes) and rely on masterful craft to create effects that transcend the world of physical things. Those effects, if well conceived and executed, have the potential to evoke in the spectator a state of wonder.”
INC MAGAZINE – MAGIC IN BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY
Aaron Levie of Box: How to Wow a Crowd
The founder and CEO of Box, Aaron Levie, was a professional magician as a teenager – here he explains how he applies what he learned in magic to grab a business audience’s attention and build suspense.