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Subliminal Advertising
These secret messages are now confirmed to be affecting the brain
without the user awareness which debunks the theory brought forward by
William James who lived from 1842 to 1910. This also confirms that
watching TV advertising is again playing in areas where no one should be
allowed to manipulate for the single reason, a violation of privacy
can be
breached. The use of visual brain washing entertainment brings with it a
myriad of violation potential.
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Subliminal Advertising Leaves Its Mark on the Brain
11 March 2007 - medicalnewstoday.com
UCL (University College London) researchers have found
the first physiological evidence that invisible subliminal images do
attract the brain's attention on a subconscious level. The wider
implication for the study, published in Current Biology, is that
techniques such as subliminal advertising, now banned in the UK but
still legal in the USA, certainly do leave their mark on the brain.
Using fMRI, the study looked at whether an image you aren't aware of -
but one that reaches the retina - has an impact on brain activity in
the primary visual cortex, part of the occipital lobe. Subjects'
brains did respond to the object even when they were not conscious of
having seen it.
Dr Bahador Bahrami, of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and
the UCL Department of Psychology, said: "What's interesting here is
that your brain does log things that you aren't even aware of and
can't ever become aware of. We show that there is a brain response in
the primary visual cortex to subliminal images that attract our
attention - without us having the impression of having seen anything.
These findings point to the sort of impact that subliminal advertising
may have on the brain. What our study doesn't address is whether this
would then influence you to go out and buy a product. I believe that
it's likely that subliminal advertising may affect our decisions - but
that is just speculation at this point."
Subjects wore red-blue filter glasses that projected faint pictures of
everyday objects (such as pliers and an iron) to one eye and a strong
flashing image known as 'continuous flash suppression' to the other.
This recently developed technique effectively erases subjects'
awareness of the faint images so that they were unable to localise the
faint images on screen. At the same time, subjects performed either an
easy task - picking out the letter T from a stream of letters, or a
task that required more concentration in which subjects had to pick
out the white N or blue Z from the same stream.
During the harder task, the subjects' brains blocked out the
subliminal image and the fMRI scan did not detect any associated
neural activity. This finding - that the brain does not pick up on
subliminal stimuli if it is too busily occupied with other things -
shows that some degree of attention is needed for even the
subconscious to pick up on subliminal images.
Dr Bahrami said: "This is exciting research for the scientific
community because it challenges previous thinking - that what is
subconscious is also automatic, effortless and unaffected by
attention. This research shows that when your brain doesn't have the
capacity to pay attention to an image, even images that act on our
subconscious simply do not get registered." The research challenges
the theory of the pioneering American psychologist and philosopher,
William James, (1842-1910), who said: "We are conscious of what we
attend to - and not conscious of what we do not attend to".
The team's findings show that there are situations where consciousness
and attention don't go hand in hand.
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Contact: Alex Brew
http://www.ucl.uk/ |
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