Magic tricks explained by Edinburgh research

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have unveiled the tricks of magic through studies into attentional eyesight aspects.

The research was illustrated on the BBC science show 'Bang Goes the Theory' on 28 September, in which it was shown that human vision is based upon a series of short glimpses of a given scene.

Dr. Michael Herrmann, Lecturer in Informatics at the University, explains: “The mind does not really perceive ‘images’, it reconstructs a lot of the scene, especially things out of focus.”

Lead researcher Professor John Henderson, of the university’s School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, explains: “We think our eyes show us the world in sharp detail all the time, but in fact this is not the case. Our studies show that our eyes do, in fact, miss a great deal.”

Despite the practical applications, inevitably, much of this knowledge is used in the field of illusions and magic.

The mind has the ability to reconstruct "scrambled" words. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole. The scope of this research is naturally wide, touching on fields such as robotics, neuroscience and even magic.

Dr. Herrman says that the real importance of this research is in areas such as “how to place and design displays, street signs etc such that an optimal information flow towards the operator (car driver, etc) is guaranteed".

The experiment conducted on 'Bang Goes the Theory' concerned making images disappear without the participant realising.

Prof. Henderson explained, “Our research gives us insight into how people see the world and ultimately how the brain processes information.”