HOW THE BRAIN RESPONDS TO THE DESTRUCTION OF MONEY

The study is called How the Brain Responds to the Destruction of Money. It tells how the brains of 20 Danish persons, all of them adults with no history of psychiatric or neurological disease, responded as they watched videos of somebody destroying lots of Danish money.

This neuroscience research was performed by Uta Frith and Chris Frith of University College London, together with Joshua Skewes, Torben Lund and Andreas Roepstorff of Aarhus University, Denmark, and Cristina Becchio of the University of Turin, Italy.

Here, in the scientists' words, is what the volunteers saw: "A series of videos in which different actions were performed on actual banknotes with a value of either of 100 kroner (approximately 13 euro/$18) or 500 kroner (approximately 67 euro/$91), or on valueless pieces of paper of the same size ... We contrasted actions that were appropriate to money (folding or looking at valuable notes or valueless paper) and actions that were inappropriate (tearing or cutting notes or paper)."

The Danes had their heads inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner (fMRI), which recorded their brain activity. The researchers also asked each volunteer some questions, including, "How did it make you feel?" All of this, says the document, "confirmed that participants felt less comfortable during observation of destroying actions performed on money".

An additional finding: the volunteers felt more "aroused" when watching anything happen to money than when watching the same things happen to worthless paper.

They note the existence of published studies that "suggest that money can also act as a drug".

To read the complete article, see: How the Brain Responds to the Destruction of Money (www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/28/how-brain-responds-when-money-destroyed)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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