By Anne Harding Wed Jan 10, 12:02 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Scientists can now look into the brains of people making a purchase decision and predict whether or not they will buy.


When people see something they want to purchase, a portion of the brain called the nucleus accumbens "lights up" on a brain scan. If the price is too high, another region of the brain called the insula is activated and the mesial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) is deactivated, Dr. Brian Knutson of Stanford University in California and colleagues report.

Based on the activation and deactivation of these regions, Knutson and his team were able to predict whether or not people would purchase something before they were conscience of making a decision.

Knutson's group arrived at their findings after conducting a study with 26 healthy young men and women who were each given $20. During brain MRIs, study participants viewed a series of 40 objects and decided whether or not to purchase them.

The object itself appeared on the screen before the price, according to the report, published in the journal Neuron. Items people decided to buy were shipped to them, but if they didn't buy anything, they kept the $20.

By analyzing activity in the subjects' nucleus accumbens, insula and MPFC as they viewed an item, the researchers were able to predict whether or not they would buy it.

In an interview with Reuters Health, Knutson said the mechanism his team identified underlies every decision we make, from deciding what to have for lunch to whether to buy a certain stock or bond.

"We think it does generalize to other decisions simply because the brain regions we are investigating are ancient," he said. "It's likely that these mechanisms are there for reasons related to perhaps survival."

The investigators are planning to investigate brain activity in people with a more "pathological" relationship to shopping, for example "people who seem insensitive to prices or maybe are too sensitive to attractive items," he said.

The findings could also help explain why it feels easier for many people to buy with a credit card than to shell out cash, the researchers note. "The abstract nature of credit coupled with deferred payment may 'anesthetize' consumers against the pain of paying."

SOURCE: Neuron, January 4, 2007.

Nice find Hey Hey.

I'm very stingy with my money. I buy nothing unless it's absolutely necessary or if they are neuroscience books/articles.

Maybe my damn insula is too domineering, therefore I think every thing's too expensive.

Saw a similiar article in the paper today, however no mention of the shopping was made - just that scientists can now predict what a person will do. How the story has changed already!

when the activation or deactivation of certain regions of the brain happens, is this the period where the individual is analyzing consciously whether or not to buy? or it happens unconsciously and leads us to a decision later?

i would think both. We are conscious that a decision-making process is going on but often are not made privy to all of the details which presumably take place subconsciously.

There is an entire industry out there known as neuromarketing. They look for the reasons related to why a shopper purchases something. Whether its the color of the box or the way it sounds, ect.