Déjà vu

I’m thinking of anaglyphs: those blue-green offset images: you put the glasses on, your brain brings the colours together, and suddenly you see a crisp, 3D image. Scientists think the brain works in a similar way – several components do their jobs and the synergy of their union gives us those sharp, clear pictures of the past that we treasure so dearly. But what happens when it doesn’t do its job properly, when the components are, as it were, out of synch? Many magic tricks use delays to...