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Price Can Make Wine Taste Better
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Results tagged “fmri” from 60 Second Science
Price Can Make Wine Taste Better [podcast]
The neuroeconomics of a good buzz
Focus groups just got a lot more fun: A recent fMRI study shows that thinking about the price of wine can actually enhance the amount of pleasure one receives from drinking said wine. If someone gives you boxed Franzia and tells you it cost $100 a glass, you just might enjoy it more.
In what sounds like the best experiment ever, researchers had test subjects lie down in fMRI scanners while computerized tubes pumped various cabernets to their lips. They told the patients they were being served five different wines, but in truth only three wines were given, with two wines being given again but described as having a higher price. The fMRI then lit up to show increased blood flow to any part of the brain.
Both subjective reports and blood-oxygen-level-dependent activity in the pleasure centers of the brain increased positively when test subjects were told they were drinking a more expensive wine.
The Joneses Paradox: Brain-Scan Study Rewrites Economic Theory
Once a week, we tap our friends over at Daily Galaxy for insights into science, astronomy, and general tomfoolery.
“Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”
~ Epicurus (Greek philosopher, BC 341-270)
Trying to keep up with Joneses? Why is having “enough” never quite enough for those of us living in the “rat race” of urban ideals? In an interesting new study of how money motivates, brought to us by the University of Bonn, researchers discovered that humans don’t just want “more”—we want more in comparison to others. This relative sense of “more” appears to play a much larger role in motivation that previously suspected.
These findings support previous research by Andrew Oswald of England's Warwick University and David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College who found that even if our own incomes are rising, we tend to become less happy if the incomes of others are increasing more in relation to ours.
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If Robert Rodriguez were a neurologist, this is the brain scanner he'd use
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is the Hollywood cinema of neurology -- flashy, exciting, overhyped in newspapers -- and by the same token, the brain scanners themselves are like Panavision cameras: super-high-quality, but also bulky and massively expensive.
Well, no longer. Just like consumer videocameras deluded inspired hordes of Tinseltown hopefuls, now a new, cheaper kind of scanner -- called low-intensity MRI -- is set to empower a whole new generation of neuroimaging auteurs.
"The cost of MRI can be reduced dramatically," [lead researcher Vadim] Zotev told New Scientist... "The most expensive part of our system is the liquid helium cryostat, which costs about $20,000."
The new device makes fuzzy pictures, but it has a less cumbersome design which "is more suitable for a surgical environment." Also, the magnetic fields are weak enough that surgical tools might be used inside the scanning field without... well, without this happening.
[via New Scientist]
Today in Lite-Brite science: Mountaineering causes brain damage
Just when fMRI told me about why I was optimistic about my chances on Everest, it had to come back and kick me in the nuts. A new article published by a group of Spanish doctors in the American Journal of Medicine uses magnetic resonance imaging to show consistent brain damage in nearly all of the professional and amateur high-altitude mountaineers surveyed.
Only 1 in 13 of the Everest climbers had a normal MRI; the amateur showed frontal subcortical lesions, and the remainder had cortical atrophy and enlargement of Virchow-Robin spaces but no lesions. Among the remaining amateurs, 13 showed symptoms of high-altitude illness, 5 had subcortical irreversible lesions, and 10 had innumerable widened Virchow-Robin spaces. Conversely, we did not see any lesion in the control group.
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Seat of optimism in the brain identified -- inner Stuart Smalley lives in your amygdala
And now we come full circle. fMRI -- the ubiquitious (and some would say, shark-jumping) brain-imaging technique that lets scientists map mental function by watching different parts of the brain "light up" -- may help explain how we, yes, lighten up.
NYU's study found that optimism emanates from an unlikely source. It turns out that the amygdala, mainly associated with negative emotions like fear and depression, may also be the seat of our inner Stuart Smalley.
