The New Scientist has an article on how scientists are examining how Branding effects the brain.

The researchers scanned the volunteers’ brains using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect enhanced blood flow in various brain regions – the greater the flow, the greater the neural activity in those areas.

They developed a Pavlovian-type association by flashing a geometric shape on a computer screen and giving a squirt of juice into the volunteers’ mouths. However, the volunteers did not realize that they were being conditioned in this way – they were simply told to press a button to indicate on which side of the screen the shape had appeared.

The team measured how the volunteers had become conditioned by measuring their anticipation of the juice squirts following an image by measuring the dilation of their pupils.

Whoa. And the results, predictable, but interesting none-the-less:

“Stronger neural responses occur in these regions to a cue that is associated with a more preferred food,” said Doherty. “This shows that when you see a cue that is predictive of a reward, you are able to access information about your subjective preferences.”

Now that sounds like a crazy fun little test to experience. Where the hell do I sign up? I'll be a human guinea pig!

But on a serious note, the social ramifications of this kind of neuroscience are pretty staggering, and raise a few questions. How ethical is it for advertisers to utilize (and even fund) this kind of research? Do corporations have our best interests in mind when performing this research? (Yes, yes they do! Don't you know that Shreddies are an important part of this delicious breakfast?) What effect will this have on our culture? These kinds of questions are important, and to some degree, moot. Their importance should be self evident. But they are rather moot because, and I hate to be defeatist, it is already happening, and it is going to happen anyway.

We're getting into the territory here of brain hacking. What happens when we can all hack each others brains? The more we learn about the deeper structure of the brains, the more we as a culture, as a subculture or even as an individual, we will be able to hack our own, and each others, brains. In Snow Crash, Neil Stephenson hints at this kind of thing with the "metavirus". In his novel, it is a small cabal that controls the back doors into peoples brains. Is it a good thing or a bad thing if a small cabal holds this knowledge? Do we really want to know how to control, and alter the way we think? Is it too late to stuff that genii back in the bottle?

So we need to take this kind of neuroscience out of the lab-rat-ory, out of the marketing division and into the hands of "The Common Man". In fact, this is what a lot of "magick" is. Magick is auto-neuro-programming (or meta-programming) that is dressed up in symbols, mythology, spookery and kookery. It is analogous to when you are first learning how to program—or even use—a computer. You start off with only a vague understanding of what is going on; things like lambda (or the control panel) look more like incantations and alchemical symbols that perform magick, rather then an anonymous function or a method to configure how your computer works. As you get more involved you get a deeper understanding of what is going on but the symbols retain their meaning. Even though you understand that, for instance, that lambda creates an anonymous function which is really just a collection of machine instructions that blah blah blah blah blah, you don't stop using lambda to build an anonymous function. Similarly with magick. Once you figure out that invoking thoth is just a shorthand for a whole lot of complex neural activity, you still use the short-hand.

I've always thought of psychology, psychiatry and sociology as the alchemy of todays age. Neuroscience is changing these disciplines, making them more scientific. Perhaps one day we can finally start to see a bridge between, for example: Mazlows hierarchy of needs and the underlying neural action that expresses it. Maybe even we can find a bridge between a work of octerine magick and neuroscience.

DIY Brain Hacking sounds coo.