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If there is 'sparecapacity', in terms ofattention, the brain willallocate that resource tosubliminal activity

Dr Bahador Bahrami, UCL

Institute of CognitiveNeuroscience

The team carried out brain scans tomon itor the effect of subliminal ads

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Last Updated: Friday, 9 March 2007, 11:06 GMT

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Subliminal images impact on brain

The brain does register

subliminal images even if a

person is unaware they have

seen them, UK researchers

report.

The research, in Current

Biology, suggests subliminal

advertising is probably

effective.

The practice, which was firstused in the 1950s, has been banned in the UK, but is still

permitted in the US.

Using brain scans, a team from University College, London,

showed people only registered the images if the brain had

"spare capacity".

Subliminal images may be

contained in other information,

which people are aware of

receiving.

The researchers cite the

example of the film Fight Club,where a character who works

as a cinema projectionist inserts a single frame of

pornography into the 24 frames of a film shown each second.

In the movie, those watching were unaware of the split-

second shot, but felt depressed or aggressive afterwards.

'Invisible' objects

Although it has long been thought that subliminal images can

be detected without people being aware of them, and have

been used in techniques such as subliminal advertising, this is

the first time researchers have provided physiological

evidence of the impact .

The seven participants in the study wore red-blue filter

glasses that projected faint images of everyday objects, such

as an iron, on to one eye and a strong flashing image on the

other.

The strong flashing image meant the participants were not

consciously aware of the faint images projected on to the

other eye.

At the same time, they were asked to carry out an easy task,

such as picking out the letter T from a stream of letters, or a

harder task of picking out a white N or a blue Z.

Using functional MRI brain scanning, the researchers found

that during the easy task the brain registered the 'invisible'

object although the participants were unaware they had seen

it.

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This was highlighted by activity in a part of the brain called

the primary visual cortex.

But during the harder task, which required more

concentration, the fMRI scan did not pick up any relevant

brain activity suggesting the participants had not registered

the subliminal image.

Buying power?

Dr Bahador Bahrami, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience,

said: "What's interesting here is that your brain does logthings that you aren't even aware of and can't ever become

aware of.

"The brain is open to what's around it. So if there is 'spare

capacity', in terms of attention, the brain will allocate that

resource to subliminal activity.

"These findings point to the sort of impact that subliminal

advertising may have on the brain.

"What this study doesn't address is whether this would then

influence you to go out and buy a product."

Dr Bahrami is set to carry out more research to evaluate thefurther impact of subliminal words and images.

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