We’ve already talked a bit about the tenuous connection between price and quality that exists when purchasing wine. To recap, a number of economists have concluded that factors apart from the quality of a wine (as determined by expert taste tests) have a greater influence on the price of a bottle of wine.

But research from another side of the academy suggests that the price of wine may actually influence how people enjoy wine. It’s fairly easy to accept the idea that people might claim that they liked an expensive wine more than a cheaper wine. People still associate price with quality, and don’t necessarily want to admit they were incapable of telling the difference between a good wine and a mediocre wine. This axiom is easy to identify: When in doubt, prefer the expensive one, especially if you spent your own hard-earned money on it.

What if this effect can’t be dismissed that easily? A recent study from Stanford University used MRI technology to determine that the price of a wine actually influenced the response the pleasure-receiving parts of the brain upon tasting. According to this research, people don’t just say that an expensive wine tastes better to validate some preconceived notion of quality. Our brains actually recognize the wine to be of higher quality because we’ve been tipped off by factors like price.

In a pattern reflective of seemingly all academic studies involving wine tasting, the effectiveness of the research depended on an unusual, even bizarre, method of imbibing. For the MRI to work properly, the subject of the test must lie very still, to allow for a magnetic image of the blood flow in the brain. The challenge of drinking wine during this test is obvious. In this study, the lucky eleven participants guzzled wine through pumps while the MRI measured blood-flow to pleasure receptors. If you don’t consider drinking wine to be a relaxing enough pursuit on its own, perhaps you should get a pump.