To buy, or not to buy.

• Position: Shopping decisions - Brief article

Researchers may be close to identifying that little voice in your head that says "Buy it!" Using an M.R.I. machine, researchers at Stanford University in California scanned people's brains as they made shopping decisions. Subjects were given $40 and offered the chance to buy various items. Lying down inside the scanner, they would see a picture of a product and its price. Then, they had to decide whether they would like to buy it. The urge to buy activated an area of the brain that reacts to pleasure and caused it to tight up...