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Kingdom of deception g12/14/2023 Ten professional magicians and 10 control subjects (male, 5 right-handed and 5 left-handed) participated. First of all, is it possible for magicians to perform pantomime actions that are kinematically indistinguishable from real actions? If so, what is the mechanism that allows them to perform such deceptive behaviour? In the present study, we asked whether the normal kinematic differences between real and pantomimed actions would still be apparent in professional magicians, by tracking the positions of their fingers over time as they (and controls) performed the two kinds of actions ( Figure 1). To date, very little is known about how individuals with extensive experience and practice in deception, such as magicians, execute simulated actions. This difference is believed to reflect the specialized role of the dorsal stream in goal-directed visuomotor control. Recent neuroimaging data have confirmed this idea, revealing activations within well-documented left parietal “dorsal-stream” areas during the grasping of real objects, but in quite different brain areas during the pantomimed grasping of imaginary objects. Such differences have been interpreted by hypothesizing that real and pantomimed actions are governed by different visual brain pathways. Characteristically, they are made with a reduced reach velocity and greater movement amplitude during the approach phase, with the handgrip opening to a smaller extent. Previous studies have shown that although very similar at first glance, such “pantomimed” reach-to-grasp movements in untrained subjects normally differ distinctively from real ones. This is one of many sleights of hand in which simulated rather than real grasping actions are performed. For example, in a classic “French drop”, a coin gets concealed in one hand instead of being transferred to the other hand. When using “sleight-of-hand”, magicians have to perform simulated actions that are near-indistinguishable from real ones. Although deception has been previously studied from the point of view of the person being deceived, , much less is known about the skills of successful deceivers. An actor fighting in a movie scene, a boxer trying to enter the adversary's defences, and a conjurer performing a magic trick, all have in common the ability to deceive other people using body movements.
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