Fig. 1. Examples of familiar (A) and unfamiliar (B) brand logos presented in the experiment and activation of bilateral superior frontal gyri (C) for the contrast of culturally familiar brand logos vs. culturally unfamiliar brand logos (random effects analysis, thresholded at p < 0.001). Areas of significant fMRI signal change are shown as color overlays on the T1–MNI reference brain. The colored bar indicates the t statistic of the activation. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

Fig. 2. Two examples of brand logos of the category luxury and sports cars (A) and the statistical results (B) for luxury and sports cars vs. culturally unfamiliar brand logos (random effects analysis, threshold = p < 0.005 [lower threshold used for exclusion of VMPFC]).

Fig. 3. Contrast for brands of sports and luxury brands compared with value brands reveals activation of the precuneus (random effects analysis, p < 0.001). The contrast for value brands compared with sports and luxury brands failed to show any significant activation (at p < 0.001).

Fig. 4. (A) Examples of brand logos of the category value brands. Coronal slices are shown through the superior frontal gyri (left side) and ACC (right side) for the contrast value brands vs. unfamiliar brand logos in (B) (random effects analysis, p < 0.001).

Brain areas activated in the random effects analysis (p < 0.001, L = left hemisphere, R = right hemisphere, BA = Brodmann areas)