What is it?
Neuro science/marketing/ biology/economics / /psychology/psychopharmacology – fill in the blanks with anything except linguistic programming (See NLP) is the correlation of mental processes and emotional states with brain activity, as measured through various forms of scanners. Typically people are studied while undertaking a task or responding to a stimulus, and the brain scans show which regions of the brain are active. Since the brain is active all of the time, the scan shows the difference between the background activity and that due to the stimulus, which takes a fair bit of computational power.
Why now?
The 1990′s was called the Decade of the Brain, as various types of scanners became more affordable, and there was cross-fertilisation between branches of science. Chemists, psychologists, biologists and soon marketers, were able to run experiments with scanners. There are various types of scanners: MRI, fMRI, MEG,PET, CT scans, which tend to be large, expensive and unpleasant for the subject, but great advances have been made with EEG scans using sensor nets and are much more user-friendly. Pictured right, the Geodesic dEEG system from GeoMedica.
US neuromarketing firm EmSense has launched what it describes as the world’s first ‘in-home’ research panel employing neuroscience technology, using its EmBand headset device to measure positive/negative emotional response and cognitive engagement. The set uses EEG sensors to measure the electrical activity of the brain, an accelerometer to detect motions and facial twitches, and a heart-rate monitor that can gauge stress rates.
What is so good about neuroscience?
Some researchers became extremely excited by this “window into the brain”, which by-passed all the problems of self-reporting, while newspapers wrote that marketers were finding “the buy button in the brain”.
When it comes to marketing, forget focus groups and surveys. They are so 20th century.”Joey Reiman, Thought Science Chairman
It’s a direct, unfiltered way to measure response. It eliminates all the biases that plague research.” Brian Hankin, President BrightHouse Neurostrategies TM group
New Scientist used NeuroFocus to research three alternative cover designs, using brainwave monitoring from a high density EEG net array combined with eyetracking. Which design do you think won?
One design scored exceptionally well in terms of emotional engagement, attention and memory retention. It increased sales by 12% over the previous August. (It was the first on the left.) Nielsen NeuroFocus Article
Other famous examples include the Coke vs Pepsi brain scans, where in blind tests the respondents preferred Pepsi, but when told they were drinking Coke they preferred it and there was much more activity in the emotion, self-image, memory and cultural identity related areas – showing a neurological basis for brand image. Coke is on the right hand side.
While it is difficult to simply correlate thought processes with brain images (see Drawbacks below) neuroscience in its simplest form is increasingly becoming integrated with other types of research. For example, a US firm MSW has developed a ‘Full Circle Procedure’ measures consumers’ opinions, along with their neurophysiological reactions (EEG, EMG, GSR), automatic and impulsive responses (reaction times test) and their actual purchase behaviour (shelf test).
What are the drawbacks?
Just read this edited report from an experiment done by The Open University and the London Business School, led by Steven Rose. Pariticpants took a virtual tour of a supermarket while in a MEG scanner, pressing a button when they wanted to buy a product.
”Within 80 milliseconds their visual cortex responds as they perceive the choice items,”….. “A little later, regions of the brain associated with memory and speech become active…… After about 800 milliseconds — and this was the surprising thing — if and only if they really prefer one of the choice items, a region called the right parietal cortex becomes active. This then is the region of the brain involved in making conscious decisions — in this experiment about shopping choices, but maybe for more important life choices too,” Rose said.
So now marketers have to aim to get a crackle in the right parietal cortex. Neuroscientists keep finding reward centres, god spots, circuits for social pain – its too easy to watch a part of the brain light up and deduce a sub-conscious thinking or feeling pattern has occurred. Some of this is due to the statistical instruments used; there is a huge oversimplification of how and where the brain processes stimuli; (its communication between regions that matters), the computer processing of scanner outputs adds another level of interference, and finally there is the ‘what does it mean?’ question. When something ‘lights up’ what does it mean is occurring if its out of conscious awareness? New Scientist published a mea culpa editorial in 2009 about its own coverage of ‘breakthroughs’ as a result of fMRI studies: What were the neuroscientists thinking? New Scientist, 2691,3.
Further Reading
Vul, E, Harris, C, Winklielan,P, and Pashler, H (2009). Puzzlingly high correlations in in fMRI studies of emotion, personality and social cognition. Perspective on Psychological Science, 4,3, pp 274-90.
Carter, Rita, (2000) Mapping the Mind,Phoenix, Orion BooksLondon
Dixon,Norman, ((1981) Preconscious Processing, John Wiley & Sons,Chichester
Evans, Dylan, (2001) Emotion – the Science of Sentiment, Oxford University Press, Oxford
Greenfield, Susan, (2001) The Private Life of the Brain, Penguin,London
Heath, Robert, (2001) The Hidden Power of Advertising, Admap Publications,Henley on Thames
Lehrer, Jonah, The Frontal Cortex blog Psychology of sub-prime mortgages
Stauch, Barbara (2003) Why are they so weird? What’s really going on in a teenager’s brain? (Bloomsbury)
Tallis, Raymond, Neuromania* – a castle built on sand, Human Givens, Vol18, no3, 2011
Tallis, Frank (2002) Hidden Minds, A history of the Unconscious, Profile Books, London
