Imaging the impossible: An fMRI study of impossible causal relationships in magic tricks

Abstract

Understanding causal relationships and violations of those relationships is fundamental to learning about the world around us. Over time some of these relationships become so firmly established that they form part of an implicit belief system about what is possible and impossible in the world. Previous studies investigating the neural correlates of violations of learned relationships have focused on relationships that were task-specific and probabilistic. In contrast, the present study uses magic-trick perception as a means of investigating violations of relationships that are long-established, deterministic, and that form part of the aforementioned belief system. Compared to situations in which expected causal relationships are observed, magic trick perception recruited dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), brain regions associated with the detection of conflict and the implementation of cognitive control. These activations were greater in the left hemisphere, supporting a role for this hemisphere in the interpretation of complex events. DLPFC is more greatly activated by magic tricks than by surprising events, but not more greatly activated by surprising than non surprising events, suggesting that this region plays a special role in causality processing. The results suggest a role for cognitive control regions in the left hemisphere in a neurobiology of disbelief.

Magicians fix your mind: How unlikely solutions block obvious ones

“…According to Slovic and Fischhoff (1977), the conditional presentation of a problem may activate simultaneously and in parallel the probability that the prior solution (here the FS) is incorrect and the probability that it is correct. Moreover, when participants are confronted with an unnatural event (e.g., a magic trick), the conflict between what they see (e.g., levitation) and what they know about the laws of the nature (e.g., gravity laws) could create an uncomfortable mental state that they try to resolve with the most accessible solution (the FS) (Danek, Fraps, von Müller, Grothe, & Öllinger, 2014;Parris, Kuhn, Mizon, Benattayallah, & Hodgson, 2009). It is only when the magician verbally excludes a particular solution that spectators are forced to abandon the FS by deactivating its representation as a probable solution.…”

Choosing in Freedom or Forced to Choose? Introspective Blindness to Psychological Forcing in Stage-Magic

“…These studies have addressed several aspects of perception including eye-movements [41], [42], [43], [44] attention [7], [45], [46], [47], visual system limits [8], self-deception [29], [30], and brain-processing of causal effects [48]. Our study follows this fruitful tradition, by using magic to address the construction of free will.…”

Benefit of the doubt: a new view of the role of the prefrontal cortex in executive functioning and decision making

“…When stimulus conditions indicate an alteration of activated (and believed) representations, the prefrontal cortex should be critical toward “false tagging” these representations. Indeed, the prefrontal cortex is engaged when learned associations are contradicted (Fletcher et al, 2001), when evaluating data inconsistent with plausible theories (Fugelsang and Dunbar, 2004), when automatic lexical associations are violated by visual stimuli (Kerns et al, 2004), when rare events occur (Braver et al, 2001), when incongruous visual stimuli are presented (Michelon et al, 2003), when visual expectations are breached (Nobre et al, 1999), and when real-world beliefs are violated by visual illusions (Parris et al, 2009). Beyond the occurrence of unexpected events, activity in the prefrontal cortex is increased in situations of general uncertainty and decreased when situations are certain.…”