Study Spotlights Marketing's Impact on the Brain

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But another expert doesn't see neuromarketing as a benign science.

"Marketing can trump our senses," said Susan Linn, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and associate director of the Media Center of Judge Baker Children's Center. "Using medical equipment and medical technology to help marketers do their job better is very troubling."

Linn thinks the study findings could help marketers find new ways to manipulate consumers by pinpointing their marketing more accurately. "This is particularly troubling with children," she said.

"The marketing industry has done a good job convincing people about their free will and that they are making logical, well-thought-out decisions about the things that they buy," Linn said. "Studies like this suggest that, in fact, there are lots of things that influence our responses to marketing and our choices of products that are completely irrational that we might not be aware of."

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For more on free will, visit Stanford University.