Interesting !
My personal opinion is they´ll never find one.
Googling on cathexis and mimesis provides with an enlightening context for this.

"Using the data from this research, marketers hope to be able to create ads that follow the exact neurological pathways that ultimately activate the "buy button" in consumers. "


In a sense, haven't they already been successful to some degree...even if by accident. Go to a mall on the weekend. You'll see what I'm talking about.

Good points everyone. And no, I don't think they'll find their "buy button" either.

When I first read this I thought: how absurd, the "buy button". Who comes up with this silly stuff? Why would anyone want to give a cognitive research program such a laughable name?

Then I thought: maybe this is the clever approach of a researcher who convinced a bunch of gullable CEOs into funding his/her project?

The two basic philosophies in business that I observe are 1: to fill a demand or 2: to create one. I don't know about everyone else here but I notice a somewhat disturbing focus on the latter as of late, particularly in the US I regret to say. I definitely see lots of commercials for "pills" that don't always (well mostly actually) say what they're for and show a bunch of healthy people living the good life... "Ask your doctor if you need this or that or both..." I don't recall noticing any of this about 10 years ago.

At any rate the "buy button" research is being done and I'm not all that sure that it's about finding their "buy button" to begin with. Why not go for it all? Why not find the "obey all my instructions" button or the "shut down" button? Think of it as a BIG military interest. The technology exists to shut us down completely, energetically speaking. Now it's just a matter of fine tuning so to access precise cognitive aspects of the brain; precise energetic manipulating.

This is exciting research when you think of all the possibilities this will create for the betterment of the human condition, but when a bunch of corporations get to gether for the purpose of selling us something we are not willingly buying, then I'm sure the interest in it is first and foremost theirs.

Indeed, consumer control does take place to a great degree as we speak, but this "brain button" project aims to go further and I don't believe it's just about consumerism really, that just comes with the territory of control. Television is a definite form of mind control. Ever since the first radio broadcast of Orson Welle's "War of the Worlds" somewhere in the thirties, governments around the world and particularly the U.S. government have taken great interest in mind control research through media. And they've gotten quite good at it might I say.

Television stimulates the right side of the brain, the "subconscious" hemisphere which takes in unfiltered raw information opposite to the left side of the brain which is the more analythical "conscious" hemisphere. Right hemisphere (over-)stimulation releases endorphine in the brain and has a numbing effect, very much like a drug (it is one actually). This is why over time, one can actually become subconsciously addicted to the numbing effect of television. This is a very basic explanation from my basic understanding. Much more comes into play such as neurolinguistics and what have you.

My point is that this all will happen, under one name or another, and that it opens up serious ethical questions to deal with.

My question:
How do we deal with this?
What is to be expected and what is to be done?

Cheers!
dimitri