pain

Many marketers get so caught up in the technique of marketing that they neglect the human element behind it. Ecommerce, despite its digital facade, is an intensely human platform because it’s driven by people buying stuff from other…

Robert Burton of Salon wrote an interesting piece that discusses both the field of prescription drug marketing and how fMRI brain scans have been used to show that pain is "real." Fibromyalgia is a condition in which patients seem to…

Fantasizing about food and sex can reduce pain. (And you always thought those fantasies were a waste of time...) People in emotional or physical distress often turn to "comfort foods" - new research shows that just thinking about these…

We all know what the placebo effect is - give a group of patients a sugar pill instead of a medication with active ingredients, and some of them will show an improvement in their symptoms. Drug researchers treat the placebo effect as an…

Why do people react with fear when they see a snake, even though they have never been bitten by a snake or even had much contact with the reptiles? New research shows that the same areas of the brain that react to a personal experience…

Neuroscientists have used fMRI to discover that the brain's anticipation of pain can be as bad as actually experiencing the pain. Marketers should use pain references carefully.