While many of us were crunching away on nachos, watching the big game (or working), the UCLA Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center was performing real-time studies of people’s reactions to Super Bowl commercials using functional MRI technology. From the study (being released over the next 24 hours):
“Above is a picture showing the brain activation associated with the ad. What is interesting is the strong response — indicated by the arrow — in ‘mirror neuron’ areas, premotor areas active when you make an action and when you see somebody else making the same action. The activity in these areas may represent some form of empathic response.” Link.
Within 24 hours, their study will be complete and posted online; done in a fraction of the time of many scientific experiments thanks to some key data analysis measures. (via boingboing)
Watch the super bowl online here.
February 7th, 2010 at 4:13 am