Most magic tricks require a fairly sophisticated understanding of how humans perceive the world. To fall for a trick, people have to see things they perceive as important and ignore things that are ...

To help pay for his undergraduate education, Elias Garcia-Pelegrin had an unusual summer job: cruise ship magician. “I was that guy who comes out at dinnertime and does random magic for you,” he says.

A small experiment using sleights of hand and illusions offers insights into how birds and people perceive the world. By Veronique Greenwood The coin is in the illusionist’s left hand, now it’s in the ...

In an astounding scientific feat, a team of psychologists from the extremely prestigious University of Cambridge has proven that they’re capable of fooling birds — with your run-of-the-mill, ...

University of Cambridge provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK. Magic tricks can teach us about how the brain works. Magic capitalises on very specific blind spots in people’s attention ...

Source: Funkdooby, via Wikimedia Commons. Distributed under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Elias Garcia-Pelegrin first learned to perform magic as an undergraduate student. Now, as part of his doctoral ...

IN HIS right hand, Elias Garcia-Pelegrin holds a worm. He pretends to grab it with his left but, while his fingers obscure it, he lets it drop back into the right – a classic sleight of hand called ...