May I have your attention, please? : A neuroscientific study into message attention for health information

Realizing behaviour changes through health information is a difficult and complex task. This complexity is partly due to the way that people process health information. Aim of the research was to gain more insight into the underlying action mechanisms of various forms of health information, such as personally relevant and threatening health information. Attention processes for these two different messages were studied by measuring brain activity (EEG and fMRI), eye movements and reaction times during the processing of the information. The conclusion is that personally relevant health information can raise the attention, whereas presenting threatening health information can evoke defensive reactions.