NYTIMES.com: 'SLEIGHTS OF MIND'

[jerry lazar]

NEW YORK TIMES: SLEIGHTS OF MIND

Interesting report on Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness meeting...

"After two days of presentations by scientists and philosophers speculating on how the mind construes, and misconstrues, reality, we were hearing from the pros: James (The Amazing) Randi, Johnny Thompson (The Great Tomsoni), Mac King and Teller magicians who had intuitively mastered some of the lessons being learned in the laboratory about the limits of cognition and attention.

This wasnt just a group of world-class performers, said Susana Martinez-Conde, a scientist at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix who studies optical illusions and what they say about the brain. They were hand-picked because of their specific interest in the cognitive principles underlying the magic.