We may believe that they are connected to free will: See the work of John Bargh at Yale, illusion of the magic self cannot be easily suppressed: One of the more interesting findings in the free will literature is that when people believe, or are led to believe, that free will is an illusion, they may become more antisocial. Kathleen Vohs from the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler from the University of British Columbia brought thirty students into their lab for a study that was supposedly about mental arithmetic. The students were asked to calculate answers to twenty simple math problems in their heads. Before taking the test, however, half read this pa.s.sage from Francis Crick"s book The Astonishing Hypothesis: ""You," your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal ident.i.ty and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast a.s.sembly of nerve cells and their a.s.sociated molecules. Who you are is nothing but a pack of neurons...although we appear to have free will, in fact, our choices have already been predetermined for us and we cannot change that." The other fifteen students read a different pa.s.sage that did not mention free will. Later, given the chance, the students who read the more neutral pa.s.sage cheated less than the group who had read that free will is an illusion. For a discussion of this experiment, see See also D. M. Wegner, The Illusion of Conscious Will (Cambridge, Ma.s.s.: MIT Press, 2002).
Moreover, many philosophers and scientists argue: See Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves (New York: Viking Penguin, 2003).
10. Why Magic Wands Work the ideomotor effect: Dowsing is a type of divination used in attempts to locate groundwater, buried metals or ores, gems, oil, graves, and other objects beneath the surface of the earth. The dowser holds a Y-shaped rod that magically "bends" when the dowser is standing over the sought target. Automatic writing is the process of writing that does not stem from conscious thought; it is done by people in a trance state. Facilitated communication is a process by which a facilitator supports the hand or arm of an impaired person-often someone with autism-to help them write and communicate. All three practices are examples of the ideomotor effect.
But n.o.body ever fails: The season two finale of the TV show Lost revealed that pushing the b.u.t.ton indeed discharged an electromagnetic field that would otherwise continue to grow until ultimately causing the end of the world. Thus pushing the b.u.t.ton to avert world-scale destruction turned out to be a real cause-effect relationship rather than an illusory correlation. But at the beginning of the season, when the characters resign themselves to push the apparently ineffectual b.u.t.ton every 108 minutes, they have no factual data that the correlation is real.
a team of cognitive neuroscientists: B. A. Parris, G. Kuhn, G. A. Mizon, A. Benattayallah, and T. L. Hodgson (2009), "Imaging the impossible: An fMRI study of impossible causal relationships in magic tricks," Neuroimage 45(3): 103339.
Your implicit system of knowledge of cause and effect: See Neuroimage 45(3): 103339.
ACC, detects conflict: M. M. Botvinick, T. S. Braver, D. M. Barch, C. S. Carter, and J. D. Cohen (2001), "Conflict monitoring and cognitive control," Psychological Review 108: 62452.
If the mentalist never misses: Credit for this observation goes to Magic Tony.
Some people looked: A. Raz, T. Shapiro, J. Fan, and M. I. Posner (2002), "Hypnotic suggestion and the modulation of Stroop interference," Archives of General Psychiatry 59: 1155161.
Sixteen people...came into Raz"s lab: Cortex 44(10): 133641.
COMT may confer susceptibility: P. Lichtenberg, R. Bachner-Melman, I. Gritsenko, and R. P. Ebstein (2000), "Exploratory a.s.sociation study between catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) high/low enzyme activity polymorphism and hypnotizability," American Journal of Medical Genetics 96(6): 77174.
"In fact, I was the victim": See Zak"s blog: causes us to empathize with others: A recent study indicates that oxytocin is not all touchy-feely. Experimental subjects who inhaled oxytocin while playing a compet.i.tive game in the laboratory experienced stronger feelings of envy and gloating than subjects exposed to a placebo. The researchers speculated that oxytocin might intensify social emotions in general, leading to generosity and trust in positive situations and to envy and gloating in compet.i.tive scenarios. See a magician, you know you"re being scammed: See Paul Zak"s blog in Psychology Today, November 13, 2008. His book The Moral Molecule will be published in 2012 by Dutton.
11. The Magic Castle Professional pianists (and magicians!): A. Pascual-Leone, D. Nguyet, L. G. Cohen et al. (1995), "Modulation of muscle responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation during the acquisition of new fine motor skills," Journal of Neurophysiology 74: 103745; A. Pascual-Leone (2006), "The brain that plays music and is changed by it," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 930: 31529.
Here is one more: S. Blakeslee and M. Blakeslee, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own (New York: Random House, 2007).
The dance has become part of his being: See Blakeslee and Blakeslee, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own. See for an idea of what happens if you learn the samba as a baby.
They are so good: M. Natter and F. Phillips (2008), "Deceptive biological motion: Understanding illusionary movements," Journal of Vision 8(6): 1052.
The sheikh nearly fainted: In 1856, Louis-Napoleon asked Robert-Houdin to convince certain Arab chieftains that the French war machine had magical powers. Religious tribal leaders called marabouts, who used magic to control their followers, had advised their chieftains to break with the French. Napoleon wanted Robert-Houdin to convince the Arabs that French magic was stronger than Arab magic-thus avoiding a war in Algeria. One evening in a stifling hot theater in Algiers, Robert-Houdin demonstrated his powers to the a.s.sembled chieftains. He produced a cannonball from a hat. He pa.s.sed around an inexhaustible bottle that dispensed hot coffee. But his piece de resistance was issued as a challenge: "I can deprive the most powerful man of his strength and restore it at my will," said the French magician. "Anyone who thinks himself strong enough to try to experiment may draw near me." A muscular man approached. "Are you very strong?" "Oh, yes." "Are you sure you will always remain so?" "Quite sure," the man replied.
"You are mistaken," said Robert-Houdin, "for in an instant I will rob you of your strength and you shall become as a little child." Pointing to a small wooden box, he said, "Lift up this box." The man lifted the box and laughed. "Is that all?"
Robert-Houdin said "Wait!" and then, making an imposing gesture, "Behold." He waved his magic wand. "Now you are weaker than a woman. Try to lift the box." The man tried. He pulled with all his might. Sweat poured down his face. He tried to rip the box apart, to no avail. You see, the box contained a powerful electromagnet, which exerted a force unknown to the marabouts. Robert-Houdin then delivered an electric shock to the man, who ran screaming off the stage.
With this display of French supernatural power, the rebellion was put down.
In 2007, a retired CIA officer: H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace, The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception (New York: William Morrow, 2009).
12. Will the Magic Go Away?
Your mirror neuron system: S. Blakeslee and M. Blakeslee, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own (New York: Random House, 2007).
The same goes for athletics: B. Calvo-Merino, D. E. Glaser, J. Grezes, R. E. Pa.s.singham, and P. Haggard (2005), "Action observation and acquired motor skills: An fMRI study with expert dancers," Cerebral Cortex 15(8): 124349.
And it could work the other way around: Magicians are beginning to use in their stage acts perceptual effects originally designed for scientific experiments. Derren Brown and Penn & Teller execute change blindness routines that are firmly rooted in the cognitive sciences. Teller says of the change blindness routine in the Penn & Teller act, "The idea came straight from science. We thought it would be fun to show how bad they are at noticing stuff" ( J. Lehrer, "Magic and the brain: Teller reveals the neuroscience of illusion," Wired.com, April 20, 2009).
You might wonder: In fact, a few of our colleagues, led by Peter Lamont, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Edinburgh, have made this suggestion.
We believe it also determines: Y. Chen, S. Martinez-Conde et al. (2008), "Task difficulty modulates the activity of specific neuronal populations in primary visual cortex," Nature Neuroscience 11(8): 97482.
Acknowledments
This book is the product of a yearlong collaboration between the two of us and Sandy Blakeslee, who is in our opinion the most gifted and superlative neuroscience writer in the world. Sandy not only took our content and made it beautiful, she also brought an enormous amount of neuroscientific knowledge to the table. Backed by her most recent book, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, Sandy could easily teach courses on the neuroscience of motor control in the brain, at the graduate level. She certainly taught us about how to think about many of the magical effects we"ve been studying from the motor-control perspective. This book is so much stronger for her partic.i.p.ation that we simply cannot thank her enough for her insights, her beautiful writing, and her patience with both our own dreary offerings and our crazy work schedule.
Matt Blakeslee, Sandy"s son and co-writer on The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, is also a brilliant writer with a vast knowledge of neuroscience. He helped us tremendously on creating the proposal and framing the story of the book.
Dozens of selfless magicians and scientific colleagues also offered their time and expertise freely and, often, with impossibly short deadlines. A year is a very short cycle to produce a book. In the lingo of publishers, they say that our book has been crashed. As such, every deadline was tight, every request for information or fact checking was rushed, and we are very grateful to everybody for pulling together to help us on such short notice.
Our thanks go out especially to the original group of magicians who taught us the importance of magic as a neuroscientific venture (in alphabetical order): Mac King, James Randi (The Amaz!ng Randi), Apollo Robbins, Teller, and Johnny Thompson (The Great Tomsoni). They"ve guided us through this project throughout, including proofreading the magical parts of the book for accuracy. Any errors are ours, certainly, and we must admit that any brilliant insights are probably theirs.
Anthony Barnhart (Magic Tony), the outstanding young magician here in Phoenix who had the onerous task of actually teaching us to do magic with our hands, is a saint. Reading books like this one can help you understand why magic is cool intellectually. But learning to do tricks well enough to actually fool someone will take you to another level altogether. Tony also contributed many important scientific insights. So he gets our deepest thanks as well.
Dozens of other magicians have also contributed their time and insights. They include (in alphabetical order): Francesc Amilcar, Jerry Andrus, Mago Anton, Luis Boyano, Eugene Burger, Jack Devlin, Ava Do, Paul Draper, Jesus Etcheverry, Miguel angel Gea, Roberto Giobbi, Larry Ha.s.s, Danny Hillis, Joshua Jay, Penn Jillette, Isaac Jurado (Mago Isaac), Bill Kalush, David Kaye (Silly Billy), Jason Latimer, Patrick Martin, Max Maven, Jeff McBride, Eric Mead, Tom Meseroll (Magus, the Martial Magician), Harry Monti, Luis Piedrahita, Shoot Ogawa, Gabi Pareras, Kiko Pastur, Adam Rubin, Jay Sankey, Victoria Skye, Scotto Smith, Jamy Ian Swiss, Juan Tamariz, angel Vicente, Timothy Vient, Allen Waters, Michael Weber, and Richard Wiseman.
Many of our academic colleagues advised us, with our thanks: Jose-Manuel Alonso, Dan Ariely, Mahzarin Banaji, Dan Dennett, David Ea gleman, Lars Hall, Petter Johansson, Christof Koch, Gustav Kuhn, Joseph Ledoux, Luis Martinez, Michael Natter, Flip Phillips, Dan Simons, Benjamin Tatler, Paul Zak, and Stuart Zola.
We are very grateful to the various funding organizations that have supported our research or our other scientific endeavors that eventually led to this book: the Barrow Neurological Foundation, the Mind Science Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Inst.i.tutes of Health, Science Foundation Arizona, and the Arizona Biomedical Research Commission. Special thanks go to Joseph Dial of the Mind Science Foundation for spurring us along for so many years.
Phil Pomeroy and Lynne Reaves at the Barrow Neurological Inst.i.tute have been wonderful to us and the strongest possible supporters and promoters. Thank you.
We are indebted to Maria Dolores Ruiz and Guillermo Santamaria of Fundacio "la Caixa," and also Marcos Perez of Casa de las Ciencias, for bringing us together with so many colleagues in Spain.
Tom Carew, the 2009 president of the Society for Neuroscience, has been a wonderful friend. He made neuromagic a central topic for the annual conference of the SfN, the largest academic conference in the world. More than seven thousand neuroscientists attended the session.
Some of the ill.u.s.trations were made at our request, and the terrific artists who made them at the Barrow Neurological Inst.i.tute include: Mark Schornak, Marie Clarkson, Mike Hickman, and Jorge Otero-Millan.
The marine and navy officers who helped us understand the issues surrounding situational awareness in military aviation were very generous with their time: Ellis Gayles, Michael Prevost, Paul Gosden, and Vincent Bertucci.
This book would have never happened if it wasn"t for Mariette DiChristina, the editor in chief of Scientific American, who kindly sought dozens of our contributions for the Scientific American family of publications. Without her very kind encouragement, friendship, and thoughtful editing, we wouldn"t have dared to attempt to write for the public. We"re also grateful to Peter Brown for doing such a great job in editing our "Magic in the Brain" Scientific American cover story in December 2008. David Dobbs, author of Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Aga.s.siz, and the Meaning of Coral; Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide; and Pulitzer Prize winner Gareth Cook have all served as editors of our column "The Neuroscience of Illusion" in the Mind Matters section on ScientificAmerican.com, and we"re grateful to all of them for helping us so much to learn to write for the public.
We also thank George Johnson and Ben Carey, of the New York Times, who covered our magic symposium and brought it to many people"s attention in 2007 and 2008. They have also been terrific and insightful advisers since.
The book has been guided expertly through the entire publication labyrinth by Gillian Blake, executive editor at Henry Holt and Company, and her a.s.sistant Allison McElgunn. Their editing, in addition to that of Emily DeHuff, served to make the final product of this book exactly what we had hoped for and more.
Orchestrating the entire enterprise on the publishing side has been Jim Levine, our literary agent at LevineGreenberg in New York City. He and his team including Kerry Sparks and Elizabeth Fisher have made the business end of this project seem easy. Pure magic on their part, we"re sure.
Finally we want to thank our families. Susana"s sister, Carolina Martinez-Conde Garcia, helped us understand the nature of the gambler"s fallacy from the point of view of a croupier and she also digitized all of their grandfather Enrique"s diaries so that Susana could use them in chapter 10. Susana"s G.o.dmother, Maria de la Cruz Garcia Blanco, helped us understand the story of her father, Enrique, and his role in the Spanish Civil War. Our two little boys, Iago and Brais, were both born after we started working with magicians and they"ve been immersed for their entire lives. The project has taken us all over the world, to most of the continents, and to more than a dozen countries. We dragged them along with us the whole way. Our mothers, Sarah Macknik and Laura Cruz Garcia Blanco, were wonderful and often traveled with us to help take care of our children, but it"s really the boys who playfully suffered the brunt of the inconvenience to their young lives. Iago, at three years of age, has his own gold member frequent flier card with US Airways. Playing in a different hotel every week, seeking out children to play with in anonymous restaurants-they"ve been real troupers and we"re so grateful to them for the magic they bring to our lives.
About the Authors.
Stephen L. Macknik, Ph.D., is the director of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neurophysiology at the Barrow Neurological Inst.i.tute in Phoenix, Arizona.
Susana Martinez-Conde, Ph.D., is the director of the Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience at BNI.
Drs. Macknik And Martinez-Conde are members of the Academy of Magical Arts (aka the Magic Castle in Hollywood), the Magic Circle (UK), the Society of American Magicians, and the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
Sandra Blakeslee, who specializes in the brain sciences, is a regular contributor to the Science Times section of The New York Times and the author of several books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Macknik, Stephen.
Sleights of mind: what the neuroscience of magic reveals about our everyday deceptions / Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde; with Sandra Blakeslee.-1st ed.