Tagged: Advertising
Your Brain on Ads
Obviously, our brain is the most complex part of our body, but did you ever think that people would use its powers to persuade and manipulate you to buy products seen in advertisements?
Well, with the ever-changing and enhancing state of technology these days, it is no surprise that people would be bound to create more amazing advancements, especially when applied to consumerism. Neuromarketers, groups of researchers who use techniques from neuroscience to study people’s reactions to products, are bringing new studies to the forefront due to the fact that only 2 percent of the brain’s energy is expended on conscious activities.
A.K. Pradeep, founder and chief executive of NeuroFocus, a neuromarketing firm based in Berkeley, California, believes that the only way to truly understand people’s inclinations is through studying their subconscious. Therefore, NeuroFocus has led the way in this upcoming field by researching volunteers through the use of eye-tracking devices and measuring the brain’s electrical frequencies.
A volunteer undergoing testing that focuses on measuring his brain’s electrical frequencies and his eye movements.
By tapping into this realm, researchers are able to get a clear view of people’s unconscious thoughts when viewing commercials, movie trailers, or web sites. As Dr. Pradeep says, “We basically compute the deep subconscious response to stimuli.”
This process has now led way to multiple companies forming in hopes of furthering the development of neuromarketing. And many big-name sponsors -such as Google, CBS, and Disney- have used neuromarketing to test consumer responses to advertisements, even political ones.
However, some people are concerned that companies could take advantage of consumer’s thoughts and use those against them.
“If I persuaded you to choose Toothpaste A or Toothpaste B, you haven’t really lost much, but if I persuaded you to choose President A or President B, the consequences could be much more profound” Dr.Pradeep says.
The likelihood of this is not large since companies are not focusing heavily on the political side of things and we do still have control over our brains.
A professor of neuroscience and psychology at Berkeley, Dr. Robert T. Knight explains that neuromarketing may distinguish between one’s positive or negative emotions, but it cannot be specific enough as to say whether one’s positive emotion is joy or excitement. The only measurable variable is if the viewer pays attention. No correlation has been made between the brain-pattern responses to neuromarketing and purchasing or reactionary behavior.
Whatever your opinion, the initiative is just beginning, and the Advertising Research Foundation has developed a project for defining industrywide standards based off of reviewing research done by participating neuromarketing firms.
The future looks bright for these companies as sponsors have poured in with great interest, but only time will tell the fate of our brains being used for or against us.
Neuromarketing – Ads That Whisper to the Brain – NYTimes.com
Subconscious Security: Our Next Big Life Investment?
Have you seen the hit summer movie, Inception, yet? If not, I recommend you to, because it’s mind bottling (Yeah, 
Anchorman’s Ron Burgundy would approve). Either way though, seen it or not, the movie tweaked my curiosity about the ever-growing interaction between technology and our brains, our minds.
In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, is on a mission to plant an idea into another character's mind in order to safely, legally, go home to his kids.
Cobb and his colleagues use a PASIV (Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous) device to access the target’s mind while he is sleeping on an airplane.
U
nfortunately for Cobb’s team, the target’s mind has what Cobb calls “subconscious security,” trained mental "projections" set up in his mind to protect it from intruders. To implant the idea, they have to find a way around this security, but how? Will they make it? The movie’s a must-see – watch and find out!
So, how is this far-off movie-world of inception, dream-sharing, and mind-reading relevant, or worthy of discussion at present?
Well, haven’t fMRI results been cluing us in on some of our emotions, conscious or not? In my last post, I discussed how one’s level of empathy correlates with the activity of the ACC (anterior cingulate cortex) as recorded by an fMRI. Whether lab volunteers knew it or not, they (their brains, really) reacted more actively to the pain of those similar to them.
And now, with the rapid succession of advancements in brain-imaging technology, mind-reading and even dream-recording does not seem so unrealistic. “Subconscious security” might actually come in handy if our privacy becomes too vulnerable.
Recent articles (one and two) discuss how researchers at Northwestern University have discovered technology that can be used to “get inside the mind of a terrorist.” In their experiment, they created a mock terror-attack plan with details known and memorized only by some lab participants. The researchers found a correlation between the participants' P300 brain waves and their guilty knowledge with “100 percent accuracy,” as J.P. Rosenfeld says.
Measuring the waves using electrodes attached to the participants' scalps, they were able to determine whether they had prior knowledge of, or strong familiarity with, certain dates, places, times, etc.
While TIME writer Eben Harrell notes the threat this type of experiment has on privacy and its clear limitations (“confounding factors” such as familiarity, not because of guilty knowledge but of fond memories, i.e. a hometown), he also notes that interrogations can be more detrimental than these experiments. Accuracy can be improved upon simply by presenting more details to participants.
In her 2008 article, Celeste Biever tells readers how scientists, particularly Yukiyasi Kamitani and his colleagues, have come to analyze brain scans and reconstruct images the lab volunteers had seen in their mind. The scientists believe their work has potential to improve reconstructions to finer focus and even color.
John-Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, referred to in Biever’s article, says that the “next step is to find out if it is possible to image things that people are thinking of.” He even considers the possibility of making “a videotape of a dream” in the near future.
However, as Berns points out in an August 2010 article written by Graham Lawton and Clare Wilson, ethical issues 
would likely be raised if this brain-imaging technology begins to bind too intimately with advertising and marketing companies. People would probably feel uncomfortable if advertising becomes too knowledgeable of the workings of their minds, perhaps even enticing them to buy things they “don’t want, don’t need, and can’t afford.”
For now though, the advertising approaches using this technology seem innocent enough. With EEG machines, advertisers can determine which designs, words, or advertisements receive certain patterns of brain activity – in other words, receive the most attention from potential buyers.
Not only have EEG machines been used by advertisers, but also by sales companies – for both purposes inspiring and not so inspiring. Starting with the latter, some companies (i.e., Mattel, Emotiv) have sold cheap EEG devices to “mainstream consumers,” particularly gamers. One Californian company, NeuroSky, has built an emotion-detecting device, determining, per se, whether one is relaxed or anxious.
While not completely necessary or inspiring, devices like these are fascinating. I’d like to see what some device thinks I’m feeling, and how accurate it is.
Fortunately, there are inspiring purposes for these EEG devices. As discussed by Tom Simonite in his April 2009 article, those with disabilities or paralysis can use the devices to help control wheel chairs and even type on a computer. One engineer, Adam Wilson, even updated his Twitter using one of these systems (BCI2000): “USING EEG TO SEND TWEET.”
Not only can EEG devices help those with disabilities or paralysis, but prosthetic limbs can also. Professors at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Weiss and Hofmann, discuss in their article that one of their systems allows the brain to “pick up…feedback from the prosthesis as if it was one’s own hand,” easing phantom pain.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has allowed prostheses to advance even more than this, aspiring to bring back to wearers the experience of touch. They awarded The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) over $30 million to "manage and test the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL)," which would 
use a "brain-controlled interface" to perform desired actions.
Despite the hurdles along the way (as noted by Andew Nusca in his blog), the lab has released a final design, as described in a reprinted online article. It offers an amazing 22 degrees of motion, weighs the average nine-pound weight of a natural limb and responds to the wearer’s thoughts.
While the blooming relationship between technology and the brain has raised ethical questions about privacy and its use, it has also brought hope and awe to people. Maybe, with the seeming innocence of neuro-marketing thus far and the hope inspired by research and development, we won't need to turn to “subconscious security” just yet.
Sources:
Reading Terrorists Minds About Imminent Attack: Brain Waves Correlate to Guilty Knowledge in Mock Terrorism Scenarios – Science Daily (reprint)
Fighting Crime by Reading Minds – Eben Harrell of TIME
'Mind-reading' software could record your dreams – Celeste Biever of New Scientist
Visual Image Reconstruction from Human Brain Activity using a Combination of Multiscale Local Image Decoders – Kamitani, et. al of Neuron
Mind-reading marketers have ways of making you buy – Graham Lawton and Clare Wilson of New Scientist
Mind-reading headsets will change your brain – Tom Simonite of New Scientist
Prosthesis with information at its fingertips – Weiss and Hofmann of FS University of Jena
DARPA aims to control prosthetic limbs with brain implants – Andrew Nusca of Smart Planet
Thought Control of Prosthetic Limbs Funded by DARPA – Neuroscience News (reprint)
