The nearly simultaneous release of a neuromarketing article, Brain Sells, in TIME Europe, and a neuroeconomics article, Mind Games, in the New Yorker, has generated a considerable amount of blog activity. (See our commentary, TIME Europe Bullish on Neuromarketing and Mind Games: New Yorker on Neuroeconomics.) Much of this activity has been from bloggers other than the “usual suspects” who write often on these topics. The chart to the left shows Technorati’s measure of posting activity for the combined fields; that’s a static snapshot at the time of this post – you can also see a constantly updating chart of posting on Neuromarketing in Blogs.
In general, perhaps because of its thorough coverage of the topic, not to mention US distribution, John Cassidy’s New Yorker article seems to have generate more attention. The Bellows blog thought that Cassidy’s enthusiasm for explaining decision making with neuroscience went a bit too far, commenting, “Life is incredibly complex, and to doubt our decision making capabilities based on our performance in financial markets seems a little?unimaginative.” Two Newtons notes simply that Cassidy’s article is being posted on by “90% of the blogs in the universe” – I guess we’ll have to watch the live Technorati chart to judge that claim. 
Greg Mankiw’s Blog comments on fellow Harvard prof David Laibson, “But maybe Laibson is right that we need to redefine ‘microfoundations’ as starting at the neuron and building up from there.” Victoria Pynchon of the Settle it Now blog calls neuroeconomics “heady stuff” (and then disclaims any punning intention!).
On the neuromarketing front, the Yuticha blog bullishly posts, “Neuro Marketing comes of age,” citing the TIME article as one indicator of the maturation of the field.
It will be interesting to see whether this burst of neuro-interest continues…
This is the most interesting work to arrive on the scene in a long, long time. I work with very high level decision-makers (deciding whether to settle litigation in the hundreds of millions of dollars) and the understandings you all are working with are completely unknown to them. The graduate business school academics and the new “kids” coming into law and business have these levels of sophistication, but the people who exercise power and deploy money in the trillions don’t. So keep up the good work and visit my blog and let me know when there’s something I should know that will effect the decisions of people in power in the commercial and financial sphere — and please please please make it understandable to the liberal arts majors amongst us! Thanks for all the great work!
and, oh yes, here are my blogs:
http://settleitnow.blogspot.com (negotiation)
http://mediatenow.blogspot.com (mediation)
cheers!
Vickie Pynchon
There is a blog which has been started by Biju Dominic. It will be interesting to see the thoughts he comes up with. A bit contrarian ..but interesting.
http://neuromarketing.typepad.com