The affect of Neuroecomics on manufacturing Sensations

Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary study bridging between economics, neuroscience, and psychology. It attempts to understand how one makes economics/monetary related decisions (economic behaviors) via studies on our brain activities when we do so. It is an attempt at quantifying the qualitative...it is possible to measure the feelings of the human heart.

Experiment done by MIT professor Drazen Perlec illustrated that our perception and sensation are partly constructive rather than intutive, how we feel and value an object is very much depend on prior influences (marketing, brand, previous experiences forming perception). Using three case studies, Prelec illustrates how “neuroeconomics picks up some of these violations of rationality, trying to understand where in the brain we can get a deep understanding of what’s going on.” In a notable instance, subjects sipped different wines (through a straw) in the fMRI, and were asked to rate them. They were told they were drinking wine that ranged in price from $5 to $90. The “dirty trick was the $5 and $45 wines were the same, as were the $10 and $90 wines.” Not surprisingly, “ratings were massively influenced by price,” so the $90 wine was considered exceptional.

What was surprising, says Prelec, was that “the brain lies also.” An area behind the forehead, the medial prefrontal cortex, which is associated with the perception of value, burst into more activity when the subject experienced the “$90” wine than with the exact same “$10” wine. It seems as if the very idea of quality, or value -- often a marketing ploy -- makes a product like wine more enjoyable.

In the future, social behavior will be generated based on how "affective" you are capable of producing a particular sensation (a mechanism to behavioral motivation) that can manipulate one's decision.

Reference: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/598
http://www.neuro-economics.org/