A research team conducted an experiment to figure out why some ideas take the internet by storm.

Scientists conducted a new experiment to figure out what causes some ideas to go viral while others don't. They identified the brain regions responsible for what is affectionately called "the buzz," according to a UCLA press release.

The new findings could lead to more successful public service announcements, advertising, and even more effective teaching methods in classrooms.

"We're constantly being exposed to information on Facebook, Twitter and so on," senior author of the study Matthew Lieberman said. "Some of it we pass on, and a lot of it we don't. Is there something that happens in the moment we first see it - maybe before we even realize we might pass it on - that is different for those things that we will pass on successfully versus those that we won't?"

In the first part of the study 19 UCLA students had their brains scanned with MRI technology as they watched pilots for 24 potential television shows.

The students were told to imagine they were interns, and it was their job to choose which shows would be suggested to the television station's producers. They were also asked to make a video-assessment of each pilot.

Another group of 79 students acting as the "producers" watched the video assessments from the previous group and then gave their own opinion of the pilots.

The study found the most persuasive interns were those with high activity in the temporoparietal junction region of the brain when they were first exposed to the pilots that they liked. The study authors called this the "salesperson effect."

"We found that increased activity in the TPJ was associated with an increased ability to convince others to get on board with their favorite ideas. Nobody had looked before at which brain regions are associated with the successful spread of ideas," lead author Emily Falk said.

The study found the "sales person effect" to be the leading factor in certain ideas spreading.

"Our study suggests that people are regularly attuned to how the things they're seeing will be useful and interesting, not just to themselves but to other people," Lieberman said.

"We always seem to be on the lookout for who else will find this helpful, amusing or interesting, and our brain data are showing evidence of that," he said. "At the first encounter with information, people are already using the brain network involved in thinking about how this can be interesting to other people. We're wired to want to share information with other people. I think that is a profound statement about the social nature of our minds."

Before the study was conducted researchers did not know there was a specific part of the brain related to contagious ideas.

"Now we have mapped the brain regions associated with ideas that are likely to be contagious and are associated with being a good 'idea salesperson.' In the future, we would like to be able to use these brain maps to forecast what ideas are likely to be successful and who is likely to be effective at spreading them,"   Falk said.

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