Persuasive messages are characterized by limbic and prefrontal co-activation and improved recollection.

Abstract

Persuasion theories posit that both affective and executive processes in response to health messages are important for successful behavior change. However, it remains unclear how the brain networks responsible for these processes interact while viewing persuasive messages. The current fMRI study asked 65 adolescents (ages 15 to 19) to make momentary affective appraisals in response to 10 anti-drug public service announcements (PSAs) previously found to be strongly convincing, 10 found to be weakly convincing, and 10 comparison advertisements not related to drugs. Results showed that while both strong and weak anti-drug PSAs elicited arousal-related brain activity in limbic (amygdala, nucleus accumbens, OFC) and medial prefrontal brain regions, strong compared to weak anti-drug PSAs elicited more arousal-related activity in lateral prefrontal cortical regions associated with executive control (IFG, MFG). A functional connectivity analysis also showed greater functional co-activation between amygdala and the lateral prefrontal cortex during strong compared to weak antidrug PSAs. A memory test given to a subset of 30 subjects after a one-week delay suggested that strongly convincing anti-drug PSAs were associated with better declarative memory. In contrast to extant views of an antagonistic relationship between limbic and prefrontal neural networks, the present findings demonstrate that strongly persuasive messages elicit increased simultaneous activation in brain regions responsible for emotional arousal and executive control.