Banging Away at the Old Prefrontal Cortex
Quick: What do Coca-Cola and the Bush campaign have in common?
Answer: Branding. Repetition. Staying "on message." All, perhaps, names for the same thing.
Etymologically, the word brand traces ultimately to Old English (and, previously, Scandinavian) words denoting the blade of a sword (brand, brond), which, in turn, arose from byrnan, beornan -- to burn. Which, of course, makes sense, not only in the crude image of cattle drivers, burning their ranch's mark into the flank of a calf, but in the more subtle ways in which modern branding efforts burrow and burn their way into our brains.
The effects of branding on behavior have found their fullest scientific exegesis in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that track brand-directed activity in specific brain regions. The most highly publicized such work has come from the lab of Read Montague at the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine, whose work with several colleagues on this front was finally published recently in Neuron. The work essentially involves the "Pepsi challenge": experimental subjects were first given portions of Coca-Cola and Pepsi in unmarked containers, and then were given two portions of the same drink (i.e., either two portions of Coke or two portions of Pepsi), but with brand information presented with one of the drinks. During both trials, the brain activity of the subjects was mapped using fMRI.
The result: subjects in the blind taste tests showed no difference in their preferences of Coke versus Pepsi. But when the subjects were led, through brand information, to believe that one of the drinks was Coca-Cola -- irrespective of what they were actually drinking -- they expressed a significant preference for the drink they thought was Coke. (Interestingly, presentation of the Pepsi brand didn't have the same effect.)
And the fMRI scans showed that the brand information recruited a different area of the brain as well. In the blind taste test, in which only sensory information was being processed, the brain activity was centered in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), an area believed to be involved in basic assessments of reward and punishment -- "the representation of elementary positive and negative emotional states." In the test that included information on the Coke brand, by contrast, there was significantly elevated actvity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), hippocampus, and midbrain. These latter brain areas are involved in higher congitive control, including "working memory," in the framing of "goal states" out of emotional information, and in "employing affective [i.e., emotional] information in biasing behavior."
In short (at least as I would interpret all of this), a good brand stimulates areas of the brain that appear to be involved in drawing together the constellation of factors that contribute to our sense of ourselves -- our memories, and the emotional states yoked to those memories -- and in shaping those myriad variables into a particular action or decision. And the brand achieves this legerdemain, I would submit, through ceaseless repetition, and through a relentless process of connecting simple verbal and visual constructs with specific emotional states, until we identify the brand not only with our preferences but with our very selves.
And so it goes, perhaps, with the mandate of modern political campaigns to "stay on message." Although the Bush campaign, with its appeals to elemental fear, may be more overtly targeting the amygdala rather than the DLPFC, its legendary "message discipline" seeks, in a larger sense, to worm its own branding into the fabric of our selves, so that the repetition of a single phrase -- be it weapons of mass destruction, family values, or ownership society -- is enough to condition our reaction, judgment, and behavior. Irrespective of what it is we're actually drinking.
. . .
Carve out your place in history! Enter the Dump Bush Pumpkin-Carving Contest.
Answer: Branding. Repetition. Staying "on message." All, perhaps, names for the same thing.
Etymologically, the word brand traces ultimately to Old English (and, previously, Scandinavian) words denoting the blade of a sword (brand, brond), which, in turn, arose from byrnan, beornan -- to burn. Which, of course, makes sense, not only in the crude image of cattle drivers, burning their ranch's mark into the flank of a calf, but in the more subtle ways in which modern branding efforts burrow and burn their way into our brains.
The effects of branding on behavior have found their fullest scientific exegesis in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that track brand-directed activity in specific brain regions. The most highly publicized such work has come from the lab of Read Montague at the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine, whose work with several colleagues on this front was finally published recently in Neuron. The work essentially involves the "Pepsi challenge": experimental subjects were first given portions of Coca-Cola and Pepsi in unmarked containers, and then were given two portions of the same drink (i.e., either two portions of Coke or two portions of Pepsi), but with brand information presented with one of the drinks. During both trials, the brain activity of the subjects was mapped using fMRI.
The result: subjects in the blind taste tests showed no difference in their preferences of Coke versus Pepsi. But when the subjects were led, through brand information, to believe that one of the drinks was Coca-Cola -- irrespective of what they were actually drinking -- they expressed a significant preference for the drink they thought was Coke. (Interestingly, presentation of the Pepsi brand didn't have the same effect.)
And the fMRI scans showed that the brand information recruited a different area of the brain as well. In the blind taste test, in which only sensory information was being processed, the brain activity was centered in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), an area believed to be involved in basic assessments of reward and punishment -- "the representation of elementary positive and negative emotional states." In the test that included information on the Coke brand, by contrast, there was significantly elevated actvity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), hippocampus, and midbrain. These latter brain areas are involved in higher congitive control, including "working memory," in the framing of "goal states" out of emotional information, and in "employing affective [i.e., emotional] information in biasing behavior."
In short (at least as I would interpret all of this), a good brand stimulates areas of the brain that appear to be involved in drawing together the constellation of factors that contribute to our sense of ourselves -- our memories, and the emotional states yoked to those memories -- and in shaping those myriad variables into a particular action or decision. And the brand achieves this legerdemain, I would submit, through ceaseless repetition, and through a relentless process of connecting simple verbal and visual constructs with specific emotional states, until we identify the brand not only with our preferences but with our very selves.
And so it goes, perhaps, with the mandate of modern political campaigns to "stay on message." Although the Bush campaign, with its appeals to elemental fear, may be more overtly targeting the amygdala rather than the DLPFC, its legendary "message discipline" seeks, in a larger sense, to worm its own branding into the fabric of our selves, so that the repetition of a single phrase -- be it weapons of mass destruction, family values, or ownership society -- is enough to condition our reaction, judgment, and behavior. Irrespective of what it is we're actually drinking.
. . .
Carve out your place in history! Enter the Dump Bush Pumpkin-Carving Contest.
posted by ahab at 7:55 AM
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