Abstract
In recent years, there seems to be no preference, choice, emotion, thought, or behavior that has escaped the scrutiny of a neuroimaging machine. Scanning the brain allegedly reveals insights into the foundations of morality (Greene et al., 2001), altruism (Tankersley et al., 2007), sense of humor (Bartolo et al., 2006) and even religious beliefs and God (Kapogiannis et al., 2009), to name just a few of the disparate topics that have been studied. As neuroimaging studies become increasingly popular, a growing number of researchers in the business disciplines are applying such techniques within their areas of interest. In such works, researchers look at and map the parts of the brain that are involved in processing decisions, preferences, and choices. Studies range from predicting future sales of popular songs based on how certain areas in the brain were activated on a sample of individuals prior to a song's release (Berns and Moore, 2012), how advertisements using various forms of persuasion engage different parts of the brain (Cook et al., 2011), and how arbitrary prices of wine alter the reward activities in an area of the brain associated with pleasure (Plassmann et al., 2008).
Highlights
In recent years, there seems to be no preference, choice, emotion, thought, or behavior that has escaped the scrutiny of a neuroimaging machine
The modus operandi of most imaging procedures, such as fMRI, is to track blood oxygenation in the brain with the underlying assumption that as blood flows to a region, the more neurons are activated in this area
The striking colorful brain photos and associated technical jargon have a persuasive effect on researchers and lay person alike (McCabe and Castel, 2008; Trout, 2008; Weisberg et al, 2008), but this should not blind us to some of the shortcomings of the paradigm including the likelihood of reporting spurious correlations (Vul et al, 2009) and false positives such as the infamous case of the neuronal activation patterns “found” in a dead Atlantic salmon (Bennett et al, 2010)
Summary
There seems to be no preference, choice, emotion, thought, or behavior that has escaped the scrutiny of a neuroimaging machine. A more fundamental problem in neuroimaging studies is the inability to identify the exact area in the brain responsible for a given cognitive process.
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