Researchers report that in 36 people undergoing functional MRI scans while watching online videos, increased activity in the brain's nucleus accumbens and medial prefrontal cortex that was associated with positive arousal, as well as decreased activity in the anterior insula that was associated with negative arousal, predicted whether or not individuals would continue watching the videos; across the group, activity in a subset of these brain regions was sufficient to forecast aggregate video view frequency and duration on the Internet, suggesting that brain activity associated with anticipatory affect can forecast attention allocation in online media, according to the authors.
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Article #19-05178: "Brain activity forecasts video engagement in an internet attention market," by Lester C. Tong, M. Yavuz Acikalin, Alexander Genevsky, Baba Shiv, and Brian Knutson.
MEDIA CONTACT: Brian Knutson, Stanford University, CA; tel: 650-725-1876; e-mail: knutson@stanford.edu
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences