May 2023

Kathy L. Niu, MD, serves as the Psychiatry Clerkship Director and Co-Director of the Brain, Behavior, and Movement Course for medical students at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She has a joint appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and in the Department of Neurology. She completed medical school at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and is a distinguished graduate of our combined neuropsychiatry residency program. She was an excellent resident, chief resident and won the prestigious Purple Brain Award for excellence, service and sacrifice as a junior resident and was actively engaged in Neuro-Psychiatry Research and awarded the Clinical Neuroscience Trainee award from the American Neuropsychiatric Association (ANPA) which is a prestigious national award given to one Neuro-Psychiatry Resident every year for excellence clinically and in research. 

Barbara Schildkrout, is a neuropsychiatrist affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, (MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry-part-time, Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston). She is co-president of the Boston Society of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry and Chair of the Neuropsychiatry Committee of the Group for Advancement of Psychiatry. She has written on wide-ranging topics including diagnostic errors, the importance of rare diseases in psychiatry, theories about the etiology of Joan of Arc’s voices, and education in clinical neuroscience for psychiatrists. She and Kathy Niu became interested in the neuropsychiatry of magic and first presented the topic to the American Neuropsychiatric Association together. 

Magicians are masters of illusion and deception and have developed and use astonishing methods to manipulate our experience and take advantage of our limited perceptive capabilities.  It is an area that is not only at the intersection of imagination and reality but also art and neuroscience and can teach us much about neuropsychiatric and cognitive function as well as highlight our limited and often easily manipulated perspectives.  It is also a lot of fun and eminently enjoyable!