Departmental Papers (ASC)
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
11-26-2012
Publication Source
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Volume
6
Start Page
Article 313
DOI
10.3389/fnhum.2012.00313
Abstract
What happens in the mind of a person who first hears a potentially exciting idea?We examined the neural precursors of spreading ideas with enthusiasm, and dissected enthusiasm into component processes that can be identified through automated linguistic analysis, gestalt human ratings of combined linguistic and non-verbal cues, and points of convergence/divergence between the two. We combined tools from natural language processing (NLP) with data gathered using fMRI to link the neurocognitive mechanisms that are set in motion during initial exposure to ideas and subsequent behaviors of these message communicators outside of the scanner. Participants' neural activity was recorded as they reviewed ideas for potential television show pilots. Participants' language from video-taped interviews collected post-scan was transcribed and given to an automated linguistic sentiment analysis (SA) classifier, which returned ratings for evaluative language (evaluative vs. descriptive) and valence (positive vs. negative). Separately, human coders rated the enthusiasm with which participants transmitted each idea. More positive sentiment ratings by the automated classifier were associated with activation in neural regions including medial prefrontal cortex; MPFC, precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex; PC/PCC, and medial temporal lobe; MTL. More evaluative, positive, descriptions were associated exclusively with neural activity in temporal-parietal junction (TPJ). Finally, human ratings indicative of more enthusiastic sentiment were associated with activation across these regions (MPFC, PC/PCC, DMPFC, TPJ, and MTL) as well as in ventral striatum (VS), inferior parietal lobule and premotor cortex. Taken together, these data demonstrate novel links between neural activity during initial idea encoding and the enthusiasm with which the ideas are subsequently delivered. This research lays the groundwork to use machine learning and neuroimaging data to study word of mouth communication and the spread of ideas in both traditional and new media environments.
Copyright/Permission Statement
Copyright © 2012 Falk, O'Donnell and Lieberman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and subject to any copyright notices concerning any third-party graphics etc.
Keywords
fMRI, sentiment analysis, natural language processing, information diffusion, word-of-mouth
Recommended Citation
Falk, E. B., O'Donnell, M., & Lieberman, M. D. (2012). Getting the Word Out: Neural Correlates of Enthusiastic Message Propagation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6 Article 313. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00313
Included in
Applied Behavior Analysis Commons, Communication Commons, Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons
Date Posted: 23 May 2016
This document has been peer reviewed.