The higher the price of a product, the more pleasant the sensation it provokes in the regions of the brain linked to pleasure, according to an article published today in the journal PNAS.
To reach this conclusion, the researcher Antonio Rangel and his colleagues at the Caltech Institute subjected a series of subjects to different tests to assess the degree of pleasure that drinking a sip of different wines of the Cabernet Sauvignon variety gave them. had put a price tag on it. Simultaneously, the scientists explored the reaction of their brains with the help of nuclear magnetic resonance .
What the participants in the experiment did not know is that among all the wines there were two exactly the same that had been labeled with different prices. To the surprise of Rangel and his team, the subjects not only responded in the tests that they liked the more "expensive" wine more, but that while they drank it, the activity of the orbitofrontal cortex of their brain, an area related to pleasant experiences related to smell, taste and music. "The study suggests that if we expect something to taste better, our brain makes it really taste better," Rangel explained to VERY Interesting.
And according to the researcher, this is just the beginning. "Neuroeconomics can provide us with a lot of insights into how our neural circuits influence our way of acting in different situations," he adds.
