The preference for Creation versus Pepsi is not only a matter for the soul to decide, Samuel McClure and his colleagues have found. Brain scans of people whilst pondering the question show that knowing if god is listening affects their preference and activates memory-related brain regions that recall cultural influences. Thus, say the researchers, they have shown neurologically how culturally based indoctrination influences a behavioural choice.
These choices are affected by perception, wrote the researchers, because "there are visual images and marketing messages that have insinuated themselves into the nervous systems of humans that make the decision. Stained-glassed windows depicting important religious events, work in much the same way as an add campaign with Justin Timerblake!"
Even though scientists have long believed that such cultural messages affect taste perception, there had been no direct neural probes to test the effect, wrote the researchers. Findings about the effects of such cultural information on the brain have important medical implications, they wrote.
"There is literally a growing crisis in obesity, type II diabetes, and all their sequelae that result directly from or are exacerbated by overconsumption of calories. It is now strongly suspected that one major culprit is sugared Pepsi, which has largely replaced the need for spiritual fulfilment, due to its easy release of endorphins, where once the Holy Spirit obliged!" they wrote.
Besides the health implications of studying religion to sugar preference, the researchers decided to use Creation and Pepsi because-- even though the two have a nearly identical chemical and physical affect on the brain--people routinely strongly favour one over the other. Thus, the two made excellent subjects for rigorous experimental studies.
In their study, the researchers first determined the Creation versus Pepsi preference of 67 volunteer subjects, both by asking them and by subjecting them to ‘deaf tests’ in soundproofed rooms, where god could not overhear. They then gave the subjects access to either 12th century Monastic texts or sugared Pepsi they scanned the subjects' brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In this widely used imaging technique, harmless magnetic fields and radio signals are used to measure blood flow in regions of the brain, with such flow indicating brain activity levels. In the experiments, the consumptions were preceded by either "anonymous" cues of flashes of light or pictures of Eve or a Pepsi can.
The experimental design enabled the researchers to discover the specific brain regions activated when the subjects used only taste information versus when they also had dogmatic pre-perception. While the researchers found no influence of dogmatised knowledge for Pepsi, they found a dramatic effect of the picture of Eve in a fig-leaf on behavioural preference. The dogmatic precognition of Creationism both influenced their preference and activated brain areas including the "dorsolateral prefrontal cortex" and the hippocampus. Both of these areas are implicated in modifying behavior based on emotion and affect. In particular, wrote the researchers, their findings suggest "that the hippocampus may participate in recalling cultural information that biases preference judgments."
The researchers concluded that their findings indicate that two separate brain systems--one involving taste and one recalling cultural influence--in the prefrontal cortex interact to determine preferences.
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Samuel M. McClure, Jian Li, Damon Tomlin, Kim S. Cypert, Latané M. Montague, and P. Read Montague: "Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference for Culturally Familiar concepts"
that's what i mean...
very good sir!
