An-Li Wang, PhD

Televised public service announcement (PSA) or health messages are a key component of health campaigns promoting desired behaviors in general public. However, their impact in the field has been modest at best, despite strong theoretical basis and extensive cross-sectional surveys. Thus, better understanding in the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the brain processing of persuasive information and more efficient ways to evaluate the effectiveness of these messages are urgently needed. I was among the first to apply neuroscience knowledge and methodology to study public health communications. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), I demonstrated that the key health communications concepts of message sensation value and argument strength had brain correlates that predicted the impact of anti-smoking PSAs on smoking behavior, indexed by the urine cotinine level. The high translational significance of this study was highlighted in the NIDA Notes and the Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Also, I conducted electroencephalograph (EEG) and fMRI studies investigating the neurobiological effects of emotional graphic cigarette warning labels (GWLs) on cognition and behavioral correlates of smoking in adult smokers, as the debate surrounding graphic warnings was evolving. These findings provided the first biological evidence supporting that emotional salience is essential to the effectiveness of GWLs and is likely to influence the future regulation of tobacco product packaging in the US.