Neuroscience Research

If you wanted to market a new cold and flu remedy intended to help suffering men and women get the rest they need, it might be helpful to know what kind of sounds are most likely to wake them up. At least that's what a company hired…

We know that smells can evoke memories - think Proust's madeleine - but new research shows that first-time scents seem to merit a unique status in our brains. The researchers used fMRI imaging to judge how well people paired scents and…

If the late Nobel Laureate Herb Simon were still around, I'm sure he'd be fascinated by neuromarketing. He did a lot to explode myths of human behavior, notably that people always behave in a rational, utility-maximizing, manner. I…

Much of the content on the web is created by users ("user generated content," or "UGC"), but only a small amount of that is actually interesting enough to generate substantial interest or "go viral." A new study by OTOInsights, a…

The idea that there is a "buy button" in the brain which clever marketers can push has been bandied about for years. While I remain skeptical that any marketing technique could work that magically, Intel is working on a new kind of buy…

Few would argue that one of the most important skills a salesperson can have is to understand what the customer is thinking, but that's a skill that's difficult to measure. Instead, hiring managers rely on evidence of past sales success (a…

It's a management maxim that bosses should dole out praise liberally when deserved, although many business environments seem more focused on punishing failure. It turns out there's solid neuroscience behind the idea of recognizing success,…

Trying to juice up your next ad campaign? Develop a clever new product strategy? Research shows that adding an outsider to the mix can improve the thinking of your team and produce better results. According to a study published in the…

Airplane crashes don't happen often, and when they do they are no doubt among the most-studied failures in any industry. Most bad business decisions, by contrast, are pushed into the past as quickly as possible. That may be one lesson -…

This isn't great news for dieters, but sometimes sugar can be a good thing. Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University, had subjects perform a mentally taxing task - watching a video while being careful to ignore random…