%T Covert brand recognition engages
emotion-specific brain networks
%P 259-273
%O Open Access article - Fulltext on publisher's website
%V 150
%I Pisa University Press
%A Silvia Casarotto
%A Emiliano Ricciardi
%A S. Romani
%A Daniele Dalli
%A Pietro Pietrini
%K Brand, IAPS picture, Emotion, Covert task, Visual oddball paradigm
%L eprints2917
%D 2012
%X 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.
%J Archives Italiennes de Biologie. A journal of Neuroscience
%N 4