Chris’ Blog

Apparently a persons liking for a particular brand is wired into a specific part of the brain. There’s a specific part of your grey matter which forces you to make the decision “Diet Coke” or "Pepsi"; "Jack Daniel’s" or "Maker’s Mark"

Before you get the wrong idea I would like to point out that normally I do not read the New Scientist. It’s not that I necessarily subscribe to the stereotypical image of people that do – i.e. beardy sandal wearing hippies – but I was never very good at science at school and it’s always rather bored me.

However, whilst waiting in the dentist’s surgery, a recent issue from January was sitting there, waiting to be read. (Well the other options were Hello, Heat and OK – all of which had Celebrity Big Brother’s Chantelle staring googly eyed at me, prompting me to think ‘Oh my God’, so in other words there were no options).

As I flicked through I came across an interesting study. Apparently a persons liking for a particular brand is wired into a specific part of the brain. In other words, there’s a specific part of your grey matter, a focused little bundle of cells, which force you to make the decision “Diet Coke” or Pepsi. Jack Daniel’s or Maker’s Mark. It’s an extension of the Pavlovian response, but through neuroimaging scientists in Pasadena have found that two specific parts, the ventral striatum and the ventral midbrain, play a crucial part in determining the level of preference in terms of such responses.

“The key message of our study is that we are able to make use of neural signals deep in our brain to guide our decisions about what items to choose, say when choosing between particular soups in a supermarket, without actually sampling the foods themselves,” says John Doherty, of Caltech, Pasadena, who conducted the research while at University College London, UK.

“This is because we can make use of our prior experiences of the items through which we fashioned subjective preferences – do I like it or not?” he said. “The next time we come to make a decision we use those preferences.

“For instance, if you learn that a particular fast food outlet gave you food poisoning the last time you ate there – it is going to be in your interest to know not to go there again once you see the sign for that shop in the street,” he adds.

Actually, whilst less scientific, I think it’s probably the memory of 24 hours spent visiting the bathroom and hurling into a sink that reminds you not to go back to a restaurant where you had food poisoning but I think we’re talking semantics here. The fact is that this looks like the first step in what will ultimately end up with some scientist, somewhere, working out how we can then influence those specific parts of the brain. He will of course, be doing it for the good of mankind, rather than in order to sell it to some multinational who will then use it to train the minds of unwitting consumers. Ultimately of course it will be banned, unless it has a military use for the US.

But you can bet your bottom dollar that it will be banned from use within the alcohol industry first. And thank goodness. Could you imagine the drinks we might find ourselves ordering at the bar? “I’ll have a babycham please”.

Still it’s a shame the power to influence people’s decisions is still a way off. Otherwise landlords around the country could subvert centuries of Pavlovian response to “Time gentlemen please!”, and direct customers’ brains to consider 2.00am a much better chucking out time. As Chantelle would so succinctly put it: “Oh my god….”

Chris Orr / db February 2006