By studying a magic trick that has been around for thousands
of years, neuroscientists have shed light on human attention and visual systems
-- as well as on the trick, itself.
"Magicians, in particular, are very intellectual
performance artists. They are very interested in the mind and how behavior
happens," Dr. Stephen Macknik, director of the Laboratory
of Behavioral Neurophysiology at the Barrow Neurological Institute(BNI),
told Discovery News. "What scientists are doing when we study perception
is pretty much the same thing, except we're using the scientific method."
The hope is that magicians' intuitive insight could help
instruct the field of neuroscience and perhaps, even be applied in medicine to
help people with attention deficit issues.
In their study, recently published in the inaugural issue of PeerJ, the researchers focused upon a
famous trick by a pair of very famous magicians. Penn & Teller's 10-year
run at The Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino has made them one of the
longest-running and most beloved acts in Las Vegas history.
Their trick, "Cups and Balls," is a classic
illusion performed by Roman magicians as far back as 2,000 years ago when
gladiators still battled in the Colosseum.
While the trick has many derivatives, the most common uses
three brightly colored balls and three opaque cups. Using sleight-of-hand, the
magician seemingly makes the balls pass through the bottoms of cups, jump from
cup to cup, disappear and reappear elsewhere or turn into entirely different
objects. In Penn & Teller's case, that different object is often a potato.
No comments:
Post a Comment