The Mind and the Magician

Like some of you, I have always been fascinated by Magicians. And we all know the fact that they, by all means, have played tricks on our minds. But yet, we still enjoyed and succumbed to them :-)

Nova Science has hosted a show sometimes last year on "How does the Brain Works?" In this show, the host took us to meet couple of magicians and Neurosciencientists.  And the quest is to find 'How our minds were fooled by the Magicians?" It turned out that the way our brains work is tied closely with our eyes. 

In the example that was given, they have a magician performing with an action that one of his hands was holding a coin and another one was taking the coin over while making a curve motion. As we followed the hand with the action, our eyes fixed on the ‘curve motion," and ignoring the other hand—the hand that actually holding the coin. At the end, our minds were thinking that the hand with the motion has caused the coin to be disappeared into the thin air, but in reality that hand only manage to perform the ‘curve motion’ that got us tricked.

When our eyes are paying attention on a certain motion, one of our neurons detect these motions, and the others two are suppressing the background—objects that we don’t have our eyes on. Apparently our brains are constantly suppressing information that we don’t care much, helping us focus on the information that matters to us.

In the case of the above example, the magician has mislead his audiences to pay attention on the motion--distract our minds--while he can hide the coin with his other hand.

And if you have 10 minutes at hands, why not watch the video :-)

I hope you enjoyed this stop to visit the Mind and the Magician.

Until next stop,
 Journey of Life