Scientists unveil how brain works with the help of magic

To tap into brain’s ‘out-of-the box’ thinking, scientists are now relying on magic tricks and illusions. Here’s one you can try using a tabletop mirror. Place your left hand on the table in front of the mirror’s reflective surface and your right hand behind the mirror, about six inches away, where you can’t see it. Now tap the table surface with both hands while looking at your reflection.

Within a minute, you’ll feel as though the hand you see reflected in the mirror is your right hand and it’s right next to the mirror — even though the hidden hand did not move. This classic “mirror box” illusion has been used in a number of neuroscience studies, including with amputees as a possible therapy to alleviate phantom limb pain, where it may help the brain re-map and adapt to a missing limb.

Now, a new version of the mirror box illusion, developed by University of Delaware brain scientist Jared Medina and doctoral student Yuqi Liu, is pulling back more of the curtain on how the brain processes multiple sensory inputs to perceive our bodies and the world around us. Their study, which is supported by the National Science Foundation, appears in Scientific …read more