The human brain consists of around one hundred billion neurons that are connected to one another via a much larger number of interfaces, the synapses.
Researching it is a complicated undertaking that requires an interdisciplinary approach.
Neuroscientific institutions today recruit researchers from many disciplines: medicine, biology, psychology, mathematics, computer science, physics and also engineering.
A collaboration that recently went by the name “Neuromagic” is more multidisciplinary.
With the help of magicians, neuroscientists want to examine the influence of their methods of deception and manipulation on an audience from the perspective of brain research.
This is intended to provide insights into human perception and memory, the economy of attention, processes that are not conscious and, above all, the ability to influence cognitive processes through targeted influencing (priming).
Scientific interest in magic is not entirely new.
As early as 1888, an article on illusions of perception appeared for the first time, which also dealt with the work of magicians.
It was penned by the American psychologist Joseph Jastrow, who became known not least for his experiments with tilting figures, i.e. images that spontaneously change shape for the viewer and can transform from a rabbit to a duck and back again.
Famous magicians took part in educational campaigns
Other scientists took up Jastrow's thread.
For example, the French intelligence researcher Alfred Binet and the German physician and philosopher Max Dessoir soon published treatises devoted exclusively to the psychology of magic.
At the same time, around 1900, a remarkable alliance developed between magicians and scientists in the fight against the rampant spiritism.
Many spiritistic experiments could be unmasked as pseudo-scientific swindles, not only because of the technical expertise of the magicians, but also because of the psychological knowledge that they had intuitively acquired over many generations.
Famous magicians such as Harry Houdini, also known as an escape artist, took part in veritable educational campaigns.
Later, the first socio-psychological works based on the observation of magic tricks emerged on the role of incorrect attributions, which concerned the incorrect assumption or interpretation of causal relationships.
A systematic consideration of the strategies developed by magicians to undermine the perception of viewers, going beyond psychology, only began about two decades ago.
It is no coincidence that scientists with a special affinity for magic are among their pioneers.
Two of them - the pharmacologist Jordi Camí and the brain researcher Luis M. Martínez - have now presented a work with "The Illusionist Brain" that meets all the requirements of a good popular scientific presentation: it provides every interested layperson or novice with clearly formulated and well-founded insights both in the field of brain research and in that of magic.