The Neuroscience Behind Advertisements

    One of my favorite memories as a child was staying up with my sister and watching tv till sunrise the next day. A few things we looked forward to about watching our favorite late-night shows were eating Oreos while drinking milk and watching the catchy infomercials that would come on. All the jingles and interesting products would mesmerize us. Good thing we were too young to know about money, otherwise our impulse buys would be out of control. One of my favorite infomercials that I still remember to this day was the "Education Connection Commercial". The way I have this jingle memorized in my head to the point where I could recite it, says a lot about this commercial. It was catchy, it was appealing, and most of all, it was informative.

    Even though I was too young to fully understand the message of this commercial, I always paid attention and would sing along with it. The graphics were visually appealing and made it feel like I was watching a fun music video. However, there was a reason why I was always so attracted to this infomercial and it had a lot to do with how it was processed in my brain. In the video, "The Neuroscience of Film," Dr. Fahd Yazin mentions that whenever we watch a video, the first and last part of the video has a higher impact on our mind and causes us to not really remember the in-between parts. This is known as the primacy effect. Dr. Fahd Yazin goes further into the different parts of the brain and explains how all these parts together give us a reaction and decide how we feel. In the nervous system, the amygdala deals with emotions, the striatum deals with desires, and the hippocampus deals with memory. 

    While watching the commercial, I feel that all parts of the brain impacted how I portrayed the commercial. I still remember it to this day. When I was a kid and saw this commercial, it would instantly make me happy and make me want to sing along to the words or move my head along with the tune. I would always get more hype to sing the end part of the jingle rather than all the words in between, which goes back to the primacy effect that Dr. Fahd Yazin mentioned. This explains why I can always remember "Get connected, for FREE with Education Connection" and feel happy while singing along with it due to the parts of the brain giving me a reaction.