Where Your Brain Wires Itself To Like (name Your Favorite Brand)

[HuckleB]

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=35774

"People come to prefer particular foods in large part by learning to associate that food with a predictive representation of the value of that food. Sometimes, those predictive associations can be with something as arbitrary as a name brand.

Now, John O'Doherty and his colleagues have traced where in the reward-processing regions of the brain such associations are developed. They described their findings in an article in the January 5, 2006, issue of Neuron. More broadly than offering insights into food preference, they said, their findings aid understanding of the fundamental neural machinery by which the brain establishes all preference behavior.

In their experiments with human volunteers, they first determined the subjects' rank-order preference of four juices--blackcurrant, melon, grapefruit, and carrot--and a tasteless, odorless control solution.

They then scanned the subjects' brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they established a Pavlovian conditioning association in the subjects. Such conditioning is the same type that Pavlov used to condition dogs to associate an otherwise irrelevant stimulus such as a bell with food. However, in this case, the researchers conditioned the subjects to associate each juice with an arbitrary visual stimulus--a geometric shape flashed on a screen.

..."

[Celebration]

1. very VERY interesting study

I get a lot of things out of this. For one thing, I know it is kind of pricey, but using MRIs for studies like this can really put the scientific stamp on what otherwise would have been anecdotal conjecture.

Next,I wonder how long this conditioning lasts?

Next, I wonder how long conditioning from a very stressful childhood lasts, and how many images, odors, sounds, and structures are tied to that stress, and how that stress is evoked in an adult (this would be hard to study but easy to imagine).

Finally, do some people really prefer carrot juice to the others?

Well, not finally because I would like to know if the conscious mind was aware of the shapes that were conditioned--was the learning conscious or subconscious? I know they didn't tell people specifically what they were going to do.

[Occulus]

2. I wonder if having a "favorite shape" would affect the results? n/t

[bemildred]

3. Ignore all the stuff about "predictive representations".

That's all crap. What is interesting here, and it is interesting, is that they managed to isolate and measure the effects of older mammalian/reptilian brain operation in alert focused people. They have, in however feeble a way, obtained a handle on the operation of the "unconcious" mind.