Mar 8th, 2007
Subliminal Advertising Leaves Its Mark On The Brain
Subliminal messages - for years science has wondered whether or not we could pick up on messages below the level of consciousness, and whether or not those messages could influence our behavior. While I believe the answer to both of those questions is an affirmative ‘yes,’ science hasn’t done much to demonstrate that this is possible. But we’re making progress.
Using fMRI, the study looked at whether an image you aren’t aware of — but one that reaches the retina — has an impact on brain activity in the primary visual cortex, part of the occipital lobe. Subjects’ brains did respond to the object even when they were not conscious of having seen it.
Dr Bahador Bahrami, of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and the UCL Department of Psychology, said: “What’s interesting here is that your brain does log things that you aren’t even aware of and can’t ever become aware of. We show that there is a brain response in the primary visual cortex to subliminal images that attract our attention — without us having the impression of having seen anything. These findings point to the sort of impact that subliminal advertising may have on the brain. What our study doesn’t address is whether this would then influence you to go out and buy a product. I believe that it’s likely that subliminal advertising may affect our decisions — but that is just speculation at this point.”
Read: ScienceDaily: Subliminal Advertising Leaves Its Mark On The Brain (via son of parnas)