London: It's a study which could help to explain why rich diners are often willing to pay thousands of rupees for a bottle of fine wine -- people enjoy the drink more if they are told it costs a lot, regardless of its taste.

A team of international researchers has carried out the study and found that drinkers when given two identical red wines were affected more by the one when told it was expensive and less by the so-called cheap plonk.

Brain scans also confirmed that their pleasure centres were activated far more by the high price of the drink rather than by the quality of the vintage.

"These results shed light on the neural effects of marketing," lead researcher Prof Antonio Rangel of California Institute of Technology was quoted by British newspaper The Daily Telegraph as saying.

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe the brains of 20 people as they were given the same Cabernet Sauvignon and told it costs anything ranging between 2.50 pounds and 45 pounds a bottle.

Most described the "higher-priced" wine as much more enjoyable. The team observed changes in a part of the brain known as the medial orbito-frontal cortex, which plays a central role in many types of pleasure.

In fact, they found that the cortex became more activated by the "expensive" wines than by the cheaper ones. "This showed that the increase in pleasure was real, even though the products were identical," Prof Rangel said. According to Hugh Johnson, the doyen of wine writers, "The same thing happens if people see a designer label.

The psychology is the same -- it's not money; it's reputation." He said that wine experts would not be fooled by superficial qualities such as price. "Most people who drink wine regularly know the real retail price and resent the big mark-up in restaurants. I think it spoils it."