Sleights of mind: What the neuroscience of magic reveals about our everyday deceptions
Sleights of mind: What the neuroscience of magic reveals about our everyday deceptions
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心灵花招：魔术神经科学揭示了我们日常的欺骗行为
DOI：
10.1172/jci46420
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发表时间：
2011
影响因子：
15.9
通讯作者：
Gustav Kuhn
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Gustav Kuhn
你有没有想过魔术师是如何让东西在你眼前消失的？对这本杂志的读者来说，这些壮举是在没有超自然力量的情况下完成的，这可能并不令人惊讶。取而代之的是，魔术师使用广泛的强大的心理技巧来操纵感知和觉察。《心灵的诡计：魔术神经科学对我们日常欺骗的启示》是由斯蒂芬·麦克尼克和苏珊娜·马丁内斯-康德撰写的，他们是两位在凤凰城巴罗神经学研究所工作的知名神经学家。在过去的三年里，他们与著名的魔术师建立了联系，并试图从心理和神经生物学过程的角度解释魔术技巧。在这本书中，作者描述了他们进入神秘的魔法世界的旅程。通过描述一些魔术师的技巧并揭示他们的许多(也许太多)秘密，作者试图解释日常认知中涉及的一些心理和神经生物学过程。
在《思维的诡计》之前，发表了一些期刊，其中作者探索了魔术和神经科学之间的一些联系(1)。他们的论点是，科学家可以从魔术师那里学到很多东西，这样做可能会使神经科学进步几十年。思维的陷阱是这一点的延伸，在这本书中，他们宣布自己是一门被他们称为神经魔术的新学科的创始人。这是一个惊喜，因为这两位作者领导着两个大型神经科学研究小组，实际上还没有发表任何受到魔法启发的经验性研究成果。这就提出了这本书的核心缺陷：尽管术语神经魔术可能是新的，但作者声称建立了这一科学领域，并不反映他们在这一领域的研究水平，也没有对本书之前的既定工作给予应有的承认(2)。
这就是说，魔术和神经科学的一般主题将会引起相当广泛的读者的兴趣。这本书的主要内容是基于对一些世界上最著名的魔术师的采访，他们对他们相当神秘的世界提供了很好的见解。虽然一些魔术师会被许多保守得很好的秘密被揭露的方式所困扰，但这些方法的深度和细节将为非魔术师提供一种轻松的刺激。例如，职业扒手阿波罗·罗宾斯提供了耐人寻味的见解，揭示了他如何误导目标的注意力，以窃取他们的财产。同样，泰勒描述了魔术中的经典之一--《守财奴的梦》，在这个故事中，魔术师凭空拿出了无数的硬币，并展示了魔术师如何操纵你对世界的假设。大多数例子之后是对日常认知过程的描述。作者使用误导原理来描述视觉系统系统选择相关信息的方式，导致对世界的描述相当贫乏，这给欺骗留下了很大的空间。虽然这本书的描述很有价值，但许多结论似乎都是投机性的，很少有科学证据支持。
作者们沉浸在魔术世界中，他们与杰出的、有洞察力的魔术师的合作值得称赞。当作者把自己放在一个“新的”科学领域的前沿时，他们忽视了过去和现在关于魔法科学研究的研究。他们没有承认，早在20世纪初，科学家们就探索了变魔术的心理机制。此外，这本书涵盖的许多概念都是心理学的，而不是神经生物学的，用来描述魔法的神经科学经常给人一种强加的感觉。考虑到作者是活跃的科学家，许多最近的科学发现被遗漏了，这也令人困惑。例如，在关于误导的一章中，作者谈到了魔术师如何利用社交线索(例如，他们在看哪里)来误导人们的注意力，但没有提到已经调查过这些问题的研究(4)。同样，他们提出了一种可能性，即在处理社交信息方面有困难的自闭症患者可能不太容易被误导，因此更有可能发现魔术师的秘密，而不讨论研究这些问题的工作(5)。
《头脑特工队》提供了许多读者感兴趣的关于魔术师使用的技巧和技术的有趣见解。此外，使用魔法作为一种工具来描述认知和神经过程通常效果良好。然而，我对书中武断和未经证实的描述和主张感到失望。由于两位作者未能为他们对新的“神经魔术”的想法提出一个明确的框架，也没有提出他们自己在该领域的任何神经科学贡献，这本书应该被视为一种个人描述，而不是一门新的科学学科的诞生。
Have you ever wondered how magicians are able to make things disappear in front of your eyes? It may come as little surprise to the readers of this journal that these feats are carried out without supernatural powers. Instead, magicians use a wide range of powerful psychological techniques to manipulate perception and awareness. Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions is written by Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, two well-established neuroscientists working at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. Over the last three years, they have formed links with renowned magicians and have tried to explain magic tricks in terms of psychological and neurobiological processes. In this book, the authors describe their journey into the secretive world of magic. By describing some of the magicians’ techniques and revealing many (perhaps too many) of their secrets, the authors try to explain some of the psychological and neurobiological processes involved in everyday cognition.
Sleights of Mind was preceded by journal publications in which the authors explored some of the links between magic and neuroscience (1). Their thesis is that scientists can learn much from magicians and that doing so may advance neuroscience by decades. Sleights of Mind is an extension of this, and in the book they declare themselves the founders of a new discipline they call neuromagic. This is a surprise, given that the authors, who head two large neuroscience research groups, have in fact not published any empirical work that has been inspired by magic. This presents the central flaw with this text: although the term neuromagic may be new, the authors’ claims of having founded this field of science do not reflect their own level of research in this area or pay due recognition to the established body of work that precedes this book (2).
That said, the general topic of magic and neuroscience will be of interest to a fairly wide readership. The main substance of the book is based on interviews with some of the world’s most renowned magicians, who offer great insights into their rather secretive world. While some magicians will be perturbed by the way in which many well-kept secrets are revealed, the depths and details of these methods will provide an easy thrill for the nonmagician. For example, professional pickpocket Apollo Robbins offers intriguing insights into how he misdirects his marks’ attention in order to steal their possessions. Similarly, Teller describes one of the classics in magic, the “Miser’s Dream,” in which the magician plucks countless coins out of thin air and illustrates how magicians manipulate your assumptions about the world. Most of the examples are then followed by descriptions of everyday cognitive processes. The authors use the principle of misdirection to describe the way in which the visual system systematically selects the relevant information, resulting in a rather impoverished representation of the world, which leaves much scope for deception. While the book is valuable for its descriptions, many of the conclusions seem rather speculative and are rarely backed up by scientific evidence.
The authors have immersed themselves in the world of magic and should be commended for their collaborations with eminent and insightful magicians. While the authors place themselves at the front of a “new” scientific field, they neglect both past and current research concerning the scientific study of magic. They fail to acknowledge that scientists as far back as the 1900s have explored the psychological mechanisms involved in conjuring (3). In addition, many of the concepts covered by this book are psychological rather than neurobiological, and the neuroscience used to describe magic often feels imposed. Given that the authors are active scientists, it is also perplexing that numerous recent scientific findings have been missed. For example, in the chapter on misdirection, the authors talk about how magicians use social cues (e.g., where they are looking) to misdirect people’s attention, but fail to mention research that has already investigated these issues (4). Similarly, they raise the possibility that individuals with autism who have difficulties in processing social information may be less readily misdirected and therefore more likely to detect the magician’s secret, without discussing work that has investigated these questions (5).
Sleights of Mind offers interesting insights into the tricks and techniques used by magicians that will be of interest to many readers. Moreover, the use of magic as a vehicle to describe cognitive and neurological processes generally works well. However, I was disappointed by the presumptuous and unsubstantiated accounts and claims within the book. As the authors fail to propose a clear framework for their idea of a new “neuromagic” and do not present any of their own neuroscientific contributions to the field, this book should be taken as a personal account rather than the birth of a new scientific discipline.