Brain Magic

How magicians exploit the natural functioning of our brains to astonish and amaze us How do magicians make us see the impossible? The Illusionist Brain takes you on an unforgettable journey through the inner workings of the human mind, revealing how magicians achieve their spectacular and seemingly impossible effects by interfering with your cognitive processes. Along the way, this lively and informative book provides a guided tour of modern neuroscience, using magic as a lens for understanding the unconscious and automatic functioning of our brains. We construct reality from the information stored in our memories and received through our senses, and our brains are remarkably adept at tricking us into believing that our experience is continuous. In fact, our minds create our perception of reality by elaborating meanings and continuities from incomplete information, and while this strategy carries clear benefits for survival, it comes with blind spots that magicians know how to exploit. Jordi Camí and Luis Martínez explore the many different ways illusionists manipulate our attention—making us look but not see—and take advantage of our individual predispositions and fragile memories. The Illusionist Brain draws on the latest findings in neuroscience to explain how magic deceives us, surprises us, and amazes us, and demonstrates how illusionists skillfully “hack” our brains to alter how we perceive things and influence what we imagine.

The award-winning New York Times bestseller about the extraordinary things that can happen when we harness the power of both the brain and the heart Growing up in the high desert of California, Jim Doty was poor, with an alcoholic father and a mother chronically depressed and paralyzed by a stroke. Today he is the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, of which the Dalai Lama is a founding benefactor. But back then his life was at a dead end until at twelve he wandered into a magic shop looking for a plastic thumb. Instead he met Ruth, a woman who taught him a series of exercises to ease his own suffering and manifest his greatest desires. Her final mandate was that he keep his heart open and teach these techniques to others. She gave him his first glimpse of the unique relationship between the brain and the heart. Doty would go on to put Ruth’s practices to work with extraordinary results—power and wealth that he could only imagine as a twelve-year-old, riding his orange Sting-Ray bike. But he neglects Ruth’s most important lesson, to keep his heart open, with disastrous results—until he has the opportunity to make a spectacular charitable contribution that will virtually ruin him. Part memoir, part science, part inspiration, and part practical instruction, Into the Magic Shop shows us how we can fundamentally change our lives by first changing our brains and our hearts.

Your imagination is a powerful tool. So powerful that if you put your mind to it, you can often achieve great things. Harnessing the power of your mind can be magical. It could even change your life! You don't even have to believe in magic. You just have to believe in yourself. Keith Barry is a magician, a scientist, a mentalist, a hypnotist, an escapologist, a mind coach and a brain hacker and he can perform mind magic on you! This book will: • Show you how to become more confident to try new things • Teach you tricks to help you fix problems in everyday life • Help you to feel good, smash your goals and bounce back when things go wrong • Make life more magical It's Keith Barry's Mind Magic, and you can learn it too!

Keith Barry is the world's leading TV Hypnotist, Mentalist And Brain Hacker. He has mastered the unique ability to hack into people's minds and rewire their subconscious. In this groundbreaking book, Keith reveals how, over the course of his astonishing career, he has developed a variety of techniques that will help you to cultivate a 'magical mindset' and develop mental toughness subconsciously. These are the very techniques he uses every day to achieve the life of his dreams. If you feel you are stuck in a rut or need help in life – whether that's with your career, your finances, your personal life or anything else – this book will help you to move forward. When you master these methods, you too will discover that anything is possible when you put your mind to it!

What can magic tell us about ourselves and our daily lives? If you subtly change the subject during an uncomfortable conversation, did you know you're using attentional 'misdirection', a core technique of magic? And if you've ever bought an expensive item you'd sworn never to buy, you were probably unaware that the salesperson was, like an accomplished magician, a master at creating the 'illusion of choice'. Leading neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde meet with magicians from all over the world to explain how the magician's art sheds light on consciousness, memory, attention, and belief. As the founders of the new discipline of NeuroMagic, they combine cutting-edge scientific research with startling insights into the tricks of the magic trade. By understanding how magic manipulates the processes in our brains, we can better understand how we work - in fields from law and education to marketing, health and psychology - for good and for ill.

How magicians exploit the natural functioning of our brains to astonish and amaze us How do magicians make us see the impossible? The Illusionist Brain takes you on an unforgettable journey through the inner workings of the human mind, revealing how magicians achieve their spectacular and seemingly impossible effects by interfering with your cognitive processes. Along the way, this lively and informative book provides a guided tour of modern neuroscience, using magic as a lens for understanding the unconscious and automatic functioning of our brains. We construct reality from the information stored in our memories and received through our senses, and our brains are remarkably adept at tricking us into believing that our experience is continuous. In fact, our minds create our perception of reality by elaborating meanings and continuities from incomplete information, and while this strategy carries clear benefits for survival, it comes with blind spots that magicians know how to exploit. Jordi Camí and Luis Martínez explore the many different ways illusionists manipulate our attention—making us look but not see—and take advantage of our individual predispositions and fragile memories. The Illusionist Brain draws on the latest findings in neuroscience to explain how magic deceives us, surprises us, and amazes us, and demonstrates how illusionists skillfully “hack” our brains to alter how we perceive things and influence what we imagine.

This book will make you see things differently. Father of a 10 year old memory champion (with 4 different national titles), Darren will show ways to remember everything from names, to phone number to important dates. Many people believe that only a few can have a brilliant mind. This book will change your mind. In order to develop brilliance, change must take place. To remember things in a manner of genius, we have to understand how the mind works. Start by creating a story. When we create a story, we are linking information together. It seems crazy that something this simple can work, but it does. If you want to have a strong memory, then create weird stories--the weirder, the better. As you practice your memory skills, you will find better ways to create objects and stories in your mind. By practicing, you will find what works and what doesn't for your own learning style. As you practice, it will get easier and easier. Learn to release the genius that exists inside all of us. These experiences don't happen by accident. They happen when you see things differently.

Professional magician Joshua Jay's (author of Magic: The Complete Course) brief and fascinating essays offer an inside look at how the very best magicians think about magic, how they practice and put together a show, what inspires them, and the psychology behind creating wonder and being tricked when we expect both, as well as why we seek magic in the first place.