In Sleights of Mind, neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde take a look at magic to explore human attention and perception. Why magic? Magicians are master manipulators of how we perceive what's happening. (As the authors put it, magicians are "like scientists from Bizarro World—doppelgängers who had outpaced us real scientists in their understanding of attention and awareness.") While uncovering what it is about our brain that allows us to be taken in by sleight of hand, Macknik and Martinez-Conde also reveal how this attentional deception is relevant to our survival.

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