dagblog - Comments for "Neuroscientists Battle Furiously Over Jennifer Aniston"

Saw this and remembered your

EmmaZahn — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:58:27 +0000

In reply to Neuroscientists Battle Furiously Over Jennifer Aniston

Saw this and remembered your post. Enjoy.

Neuroscientists: We Don’t Really Know What We Are Talking about, Either | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network: By Ferris Jabr | April 1, 2012

I think the interesting thing

Elusive Trope — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 21:40:14 +0000

In reply to Neuroscientists Battle Furiously Over Jennifer Aniston

I think the interesting thing here is that we're still in the year 2012 arguing over not just how the brain ("with its 80 billion neurons with roughly a 100 trillion connections between them") works but also the right approach to figuring out the brain works.

The folks on Madison Av. have

cmaukonen — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 02:08:20 +0000

In reply to It's not really new...

The folks on Madison Av. have know about it for years.

It's not really new...

Verified Atheist — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:05:06 +0000

In reply to Neuroscientists Battle Furiously Over Jennifer Aniston

It's not really new… (although I'm sure it's interesting to people who weren't already aware of it)

Dr. Emma Zahn does a whiz

artappraiser — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:08:51 +0000

In reply to when Dr. Fried showed his

Dr. Emma Zahn does a whiz bang job of summing it all up here:.

there really is no such thing as bad publicity.

You citing that ELM study made me think of how those neuroscientists could probably find a lot of "been there done that" fruitful data in marketing and advertising studies of long ago. On the ELM effect specifically, though, I thought right away that if the way the potential customer identifies with the celebrity endorser is related to the product, it might not always necessarily be as they say. I.E., audience has an image of George Foreman as a beefy masculine meat loving type, not one for rabbit food or finger food, and if he loves how this machine makes his meat, the beefy masculine meat lovers presume they will, too.

By contrast, something like a local sports celeb endorsing a local auto dealer probably works more like the study says, no "logical" reason to take his word for it more than anyone else's when people really engage on making a car buying choice. It's just an advantage of name recognition via that celeb neuron association, that the buyer might check them out rather than not visit at all, doesn't guarantee they will trust them.

I should add that I have a celebrity reaction that I have noticed. When I see Robert Krulwich's byline or hear his voice on TV or radio, I have this association: the way he does science stories like he's explaining to a five-year-old really really irritates me, I don't know if I want to hear/read this. But there's also another association: it's often on a topic that I would find interesting. So I sometimes will grin and bear him. In this case, it was about a direct interaction between image and brain without any added association by "marketing;" and being in the business of people's visceral reactions to images for a couple decades, that interested me.

Maybe scientists would be

EmmaZahn — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 12:58:34 +0000

In reply to when Dr. Fried showed his

Maybe scientists would be better if they were not so overspecialized,

In this case, ELM seems more likely than a specialized 'Jen' neuron. :-D

Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann (1983) found that famous endorsers such as star athletes made advertising more persuasive only when people were in a low involvement condition, not very concerned about the product (a fictitious brand of disposable razor). When subjects were put into a high involvement condition (expecting to select a brand of razor given to them free) they paid more attention to the ad, and the celebrity endorsers lost their advantage.

when Dr. Fried showed his

EmmaZahn — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 12:51:56 +0000

In reply to Neuroscientists Battle Furiously Over Jennifer Aniston

when Dr. Fried showed his patients pictures of Jennifer, (or maybe if he just mentioned her name) that reference might have triggered not just one, but a cascade of neural firings. And this may be the brain's way of storing a memory. Jennifer is not a single neuron, she's a plural, or as MIT professor Sebastian Seung puts it, she's "hierarchical organization."

And people wonder why faith in science or, more accurately, in contemporary scientists is declining.

Of course that 'Jen' neuron probably has nothing at all to do with the tabloids and magazines lining the checkout aisles in supermarkets.

Geez.

Even when assiduously avoiding pop culture references as personal experiment, I found it impossible not to be aware of 'Jen' as the wronged woman in the ongoing media obsession. Guess there really is no such thing as bad publicity.