Can some scents reduce stress? Brain scientists are now confirming what herbalists and aroma researchers have long believed. Japanese researchers, using near-infrared spectroscopy, tested the effect of a “pleasant, floral green” aroma on subjects performing a mental arithmetic task and found that stress activity in the subjects’ prefrontal cortex…

In Brain Rules by John Medina, one of the more amusing anecdotes is an informal experiment by Medina on the potency of scent to enhance the formation of…

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina (Pear Press, 320 pages) is a highly readable guide to using the…

Behavioral economics and neuroeconomics are closely related fields, rather in the same way that psychology and neuroscience are related. It seems that Democrat…

Since the early days of advertising, it's been axiomatic that pictures of babies grab the attention of readers more effectively than any other kind of image.…

Is Scratch 'n Sniff Starbucks in our future? No industry focuses as much on olfactory marketing as the coffee business. Starbucks recently dumped its…

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is saddled with an unfortunate middle name, “Hussein.” Not only is it the name of one of the most brutal and…

The basic concept of facial coding is that a trained observer can detect fleeting facial movements that indicate the true emotions that the subject is…

Evidence continues to pile up demonstrating that our brains process information without our conscious awareness, and that our behavior can be affected by these…

Last year, Absolut abandoned its classic "bottle" ad campaign. That long-running series of ads featured the shape of an Absolut bottle cleverly concealed in…