Abstract
Magic tricks violate the expected causal relationships that form an implicit belief system about what is possible in the world around us. Observing a magic effect seemingly invalidates our implicit assumptions about what action causes which outcome. We aimed at identifying the neural correlates of such expectation violations by contrasting 24 video clips of magic tricks with 24 control clips in which the expected action-outcome relationship is upheld. Using fMRI, we measured the brain activity of 25 normal volunteers while they watched the clips in the scanner. Additionally, we measured the professional magician who had performed the magic tricks under the assumption that, in contrast to naïve observers, the magician himself would not perceive his own magic tricks as an expectation violation. As the main effect of magic – control clips in the normal sample, we found higher activity for magic in the head of the caudate nucleus (CN) bilaterally, the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left anterior insula. As expected, the magician’s brain activity substantially differed from these results, with mainly parietal areas (supramarginal gyrus bilaterally) activated, supporting our hypothesis that he did not experience any expectation violation. These findings are in accordance with previous research that has implicated the head of the CN in processing changes in the contingency between action and outcome, even in the absence of reward or feedback.
Highlights
A deep need of humans is to predict future events
We argue that the moment of expectation violation is traceable to a specific time point, expectations related to the magic trick are built up over the entire clip
EXPECTATION VIOLATION (MAGIC – CONTROL): MOMENT OF VIOLATION To examine the effect of expectation violation, independent of when the film was presented, we examined the main effect of magic tricks vs. control clips, at the moment of magic, determined by independent ratings of each clip
Summary
A deep need of humans is to predict future events This ability, technically speaking causal reasoning, helps us to navigate in a complex world. Long-established causal relations like this one are typically no longer questioned, and not even explicitly represented This makes the case of magic so interesting: predictions about the outcome of observed actions and violations of these predictions are key ingredients in magic. Let us consider the following magic trick: sitting at a table, the magician takes an egg from an egg box He throws it on the floor – and it jumps back into his hands, undamaged. To prove that it is a real egg, he breaks it and empties the content into a glass. The observed event strongly violates the expected relationship between action (throwing egg to the floor) and outcome (broken egg)
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