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Market research is all in your head: MRI machines and media

The advertising industry’s use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging - fMRI - machines grows in influence. Similar to larger, more expensive MRI machines used in the medical sector, fMRI analysis can show that activity in certain regions of the brain correlates with specific emotions and types of thinking. The controversial technique, known as neuromarketing, has already started to gain traction with food companies altering their packaging and even the flavour of their products as a result of this technique. It appears likely that fMRI will become a key tool for advertisers in 2012 but it is likely to work best as part of a package alongside more traditional marketing techniques.

Euronews-science, september 2011 - Tv report

Curtains are down in this Hospital, everithing seems to be closed exept in the fMRI department ...Arnaud PETRE from Brain Impact Company is using the scanner to explore consummer's brains during the night. this is Neuro-marketing a new science to explore consummer behavior...

live brain recording - How simple it is!

In this demo, TV Copy Testing pre/post test  (animatics, commercials ,...);

In the brain fMRI machine measure each 500 msec activation of 1,500,000 cubic brain parts (those  small volumes of brain are called voxels). Imagine that all the brain is pixelated into small cubes of 1 mm ³. Once the water (cerebrospinal fluid) or cranial bones are élimimated about 500,000 voxels remains useful (because mainly the gray matter interest us).

The whole brain volume is measured every 500 msec... this constiute  a very significant improvement compared to the EEG that measures about 2% of the brain. These results can be projected onto a 3D modeled brain (Tailarach). With fMRI emotional and decisional nuclei in the deepth of the brain like  putamen, caudate nucleus accumbens, amygdala are recorded . Only the fMRi can measure this unconscious part of our brain.

The task that you are busy to make in fMRI (think, read, watch, smell, touch, taste, movement ,...) will enable or disable some of those 1.500.000 voxels. For example if you look at an advertisement the brain  processes visual and auditory informations. Those functions are those large yellow spots located on the back of the head (occipital cortex). But this ad will also activate your memory (hippocampus close to the limbic brain),  emotions (pleasure, disgust, empathy ...) or positively or negatively influence your image of you, your gustative memory (piriform cortex) because the fanta is so appetizing.

What we do for our clients is to transform those voxels results into ROI. Those functions correspond to specific brain regions or areas (eg. putamen is involved in pleasure) or often network of areas (eg. the reward circuitry involve limbic brain areas and orbito-frontal cortex)

Emotions, recognition, memory, attention, gustation, sexual pleasure, empathy, behavioral intention and call to action, disgust, fear, self-image, branding, trust in others, visual impact and auditory,  word identification, understanding of what i read, impact of music, prosody, ... Here are some examples of the richness of our analysis.

The scores of each tested stimulus (advertising, posters, websites, product, design ...) can be compared to reference (benchmarks) and changes over time can be measured ...

Neuromarketing -  définition et perspectives- darketing

’secrets of superbrands’ BBC

Superbrands' success fuelled by sex, religion and gossip

By Alex Riley and Adam Boome BBC Three