The secret of the magic tricks

On the stage, the magician announced that he would turn the white dress of the assistant wearing a red skirt. First, he shone the red headlight on the girl. Then the magic happened: when the red light went out, she really stood in the red dress. What happen?

Over the centuries, magicians have developed many ways to deceive the human mind. Now neuroscientists are starting to care about them: their art helps explain how brain perception works.

Apollo Robbins, a pickpocket is also an artist. He pursued a highly developed set of ways to hook a victim's wallet in a pocket or stole a watch.

The high recreational value of his career gave him the opportunity to publicize his career: In his second life as a magician, Robbins appeared brightly in front of many high-profile audiences - such as when he deceived Jimmy Carter's secret security officer right in front of the former president, like tricking retired old men.

The magician Klok is disappearing a woman: Can't explain by skill.Photo: DPA.

And now this wandering thief also comes to science, because the magic ability like Robbins - makes others confuse or deceive them completely - has caught the attention of neuroscientists.

For example Robbins can fool the feelings of the stolen person. Although he did not know much about the connections of nerves, it was clear that he was intuitively doing everything right:

On the way to find "prey", instead of sneaking around trying not to draw attention from the back of the victim, he rushed to the person in sight. The victim is still unaware of this - being touched, touched, glared or jostled, Apollo may have gently squeezed the wrist of the person who was wearing the expensive watch - right away then took away the luxury jewelry without any effort and was not detected.

How do you do it?

First, this daring thief drives the victim's attention elsewhere through collisions, neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona (USA) explained in a Research has just been published.

The squeezing of the wrist left on the skin of the stolen person with a touch mark still works a few seconds later. "This creates the illusion that the watch is still there as soon as it has disappeared long ago," the researchers analyzed trickily.

Macknik and Martinez-Conde recognize that in the audience there is still widespread misunderstanding that convincing art is mostly based on skill and quick performance. Just by looking at it correctly, it is possible to overturn the common tricks and concepts.

But a magician's successful performance is not just the result of an overloaded optic nerve. Rather, there are many separate mechanisms of perception that have been deceived by tricks, brain researchers believe. "Many tricks happened when the audience even thought it was not started , " Macknik and Martinez-Conde said.

Psychologists from Durham University (UK) have considered for example a magic trick in which a ball is thrown away while still flying. First of all, the magician just kept throwing the ball and catching it again - not so charismatic.

On the contrary, at the last time the magician just made a gesture of throwing the ball, he actually concealed it in his hand. But his posture is still tracking the flight by turning his head markedly. So he made the audience believe that the ball was thrown and disappeared.

Not only humans are tricked by tricks

Magic success is not just about people. Every day thousands of dogs also endured this experiment and ran to find the invisible little stick. Successful hallucinations are the fault of nerves that react similarly to real movements and gestures just like that.

In addition, at times of this purposeful deception, the brain is also a victim of a mechanism of protection from evolution, as Durham University psychologist Gustav Kuhn explains. A nerve impulse needs an average of 100 milliseconds to actually "be" aware.

"The brain compensates at this time by predicting the course of the event," Kuhn said.

This previous calculation strategy is of vital importance in situations that require rapid response, such as in traffic - "but also makes false estimates easy , " said Kuhn.

The dress changes color

In addition, brain researchers increasingly favor the notion that human perception consists of a series of photographs taken in moments that are seamlessly placed, much more than previously conjectured. A great art of Great Tomsoni provides clear evidence for this theory.

The magician invited the assistant to the stage and announced his intention to turn her white dress into a red dress. The transformation was successful thanks to a joke: After turning off the light, Mr. Tomsoni shone a red headlight on the woman in a white dress.

But then the magic happened: When the normal lighting system of the stage was turned on and the red headlight was turned off, the real woman stood there in her red dress. What happen?

The quick assistant took advantage of the moment when the red headlights were turned off and the main light turned on to remove the white dress, revealing the red dress worn inside.

The audience did not realize this moment of change. There is still a brief effect of a second in the viewer 's brain as an image of the effect of red headlight on a white dress - magic of the moment.

Researchers believe that such tricks of the audience will directly benefit them: They want to use theater techniques to deliberately influence the attention and feelings of the audience. human in the laboratory. By measuring the current in the brain during the experiment, they hoped that they would eventually find a basis of neuroscience for a very difficult human understanding.