Like the pound signs in the eyes of cartoon characters, thoughts of money light up visual areas of the brain, scientists have found that money lights up the brain

Like the pound signs in the eyes of cartoon characters, thoughts of money light up visual areas of the brain, scientists have found that thought of money lights up the brain.

Volunteers in the US had their brains scanned as they chose between red and green targets that varied in value at different times.

Selecting a target might yield 10 cents, or nothing. But participants who made the right choices could earn up to 10 dollars.

The experiment showed that rewards altered brain activation in many areas of the human visual system.

One of these was the first visually responsive region of the brain, a part of the visual cortex known as “V1” which represents basic features such as edge orientation and colour.

Study leader Dr John Serences, from the University of California at San Diego, said: “When a target has been valuable in the past - if selecting it had paid off with money - the visual system represented it more strongly.

“Rewards affected information processing, not just at a high level of cognitive function but right from the get-go.

“Though it is too early to say how this relates to perception, it raises the intriguing possibility that we see things we value more clearly - much like the way the brain responds to a bright object versus a dimly-lit...