TY - JOUR SP - 259 AV - none EP - 273 IS - 4 N2 - Consumer goods? brands have become a major driver of consumers? choice: they have got symbolic, relational and even social properties that add substantial cultural and affective value to goods and services. Therefore, measuring the role of brands in consumers? cognitive and affective processes would be very helpful to better understand economic decision making. This work aimed at finding the neural correlates of automatic, spontaneous emotional response to brands, showing how deeply integrated are consumption symbols within the cognitive and affective processes of individuals. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was measured during a visual oddball paradigm consisting in the presentation of scrambled pictures as frequent stimuli, colored squares as targets, and brands and emotional pictures (selected from the International Affective Picture System [IAPS]) as emotionally-salient distractors. Affective rating of brands was assessed individually after scanning by a validated questionnaire. Results showed that, similarly to IAPS pictures, brands activated a well-defined emotional network, including amygdala and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, highly specific of affective valence. In conclusion, this work identified the neural correlates of brands within cognitive and affective processes of consumers. VL - 150 TI - Covert brand recognition engages emotion-specific brain networks N1 - Open Access article - Fulltext on publisher's website A1 - Casarotto, Silvia A1 - Ricciardi, Emiliano A1 - Romani, S. A1 - Dalli, Daniele A1 - Pietrini, Pietro ID - eprints2917 JF - Archives Italiennes de Biologie. A journal of Neuroscience SN - 0003-9829 KW - Brand KW - IAPS picture KW - Emotion KW - Covert task KW - Visual oddball paradigm PB - Pisa University Press UR - http://www.architalbiol.org/aib/article/view/150259/23479459 Y1 - 2012/// ER -