(Entertainment-NewsWire.com, April 13, 2013 ) San Francisco, CA -- Engineer and semi-professional magician, Hugo Caffaratti, has embarked on a PhD with the University of Leicester's Center for Systems Neuroscience. While some may raise an eyebrow, what better niche study for a magician than how the mind works?
Hugo has over 12 years of experience working in the field of magic, and specializes in card tricks as a member of the Spanish Society of Illusionism, also known as SEI-ACAI.
The engineer has also been involved with neuroscience for a long time, alone with bioengineering, having earned a Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Barcelona. He now is hoping to combine the two interests in his life into a final PhD thesis project, which will cover a new field of Neuro-Magic.
As part of his overall work, he will attempt to investigate just how the brain perceives what is happening in front of one's eyes during in both standard life, as well as during an illusion.
He plans to study “forced choice”, which is a tool utilized by magicians wherein one are fooled into believing there is a choice of free will, when the choice is also determined.
Among the experiments Hugo has lined up for participants, one involves asking them to watch a video of a trick performance while sitting in front of an eye-tracker. Hugo will be able to then monitor the attention and focus of the subject during the illusion as well as immediately following, two points of interest for the magician and scientist.
Hugo said: "I have always been interested in the study of the brain. It is amazing to be involved in the process of combining the disciplines of neuroscience and magic.”
"I am really interested in the fields of decision making and forced-choice. It is incredible that many times a day we make a decision and feel free. We do not realise that we have been forced to make that decision.”
"I am constructing an experiment to study what happens when we make forced decisions -- to try and find the reasons for it. I am thinking about which kinds of tricks I know could be useful to give more insights about brain function."