Thoughts of money ‘light up the brain’

Money changes everything, they say. And, now a new study has confirmed that just thoughts of money can light up the brain.

Money changes everything, they say. And, now a new study has confirmed that just thoughts of money can light up the brain.

An international team, led by California University, has found that thoughts of money light up visual areas of the brain, including a part of visual cortex known as “V1” which represents basic features such as edge orientation and colour.

Researchers have based their findings on an analysis of brain scans of a group of volunteers as they chose between red and green targets that varied in value at different times.

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Selecting a target might yield ten cents or nothing. But those who made the right choices could earn up to ten dollars.

The findings revealed that rewards altered brain activation in many areas of the human visual system. One of these was “V1”, the first visually responsive region of the brain, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

Activation was also seen in the frontal and parietal regions of the brain which have previously been implicated in anticipating and tracking rewards.

Lead researcher Dr John Serences said: “When a target has been valuable in the past – if selecting it had paid off with money – the visual system represented it more strongly.

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Rewards affected information processing, not just at a high level of cognitive function but right from the get-go.

“Though it is too early to say how this relates to perception, it raises the intriguing possibility that we see things we value more clearly – much like the way the brain responds to a bright object versus a dimly-lit one.”

And, further research on how the brain represents the value of different objects could improve understanding of how addictions influence information processing, said Dr Serences, whose study has been published in the latest edition of the ‘Neuron’ journal.