The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind Read Online Free PDF Page A

brain’s response in milliseconds.
    Additional shortcomings for fMRI today include its cost—the equipment, specialized testing facilities, and trained staff cost many millions —and the demands on the person being tested: Only one subject can be tested at a time, and each subject must remain prone and completely motionless throughout the testing procedure, or the entire session will be invalid. If there is head movement of as little as three millimeters, it can render test results useless.
    So fMRI, while scientifically sound and medically valuable as a diagnostic tool, currently has specific structural drawbacks that limit its effectiveness as a marketing research methodology.
    Having said this, I do see significant potential of fMRI as the technology improves. Reflecting this belief, NeuroFocus recently obtained the core patent underlying the use of fMRI for neuroimaging purposes in marketing research.

    P1: OTA/XYZ
    P2: ABC
    c02
    JWBT296-Pradeep
    June 5, 2010
    13:45
    Printer Name: Courier Westford, Westford, MA
    14
    The Buying Brain
    Biometrics
    This is an overall term that represents measurements of physiological responses in the body—not directly in the brain—to external stimuli we experience with our senses. Examples of biometric measures include heart and respiration rates, eye movements, blinking, galvanic skin response (GSR), facial muscle movement, and body movements.
    Some biometric measurements are limited for marketing research purposes in that they are “lagging indicators,” not direct measures, of primary brain activity. That is, the brain may issue an order to the body well before the physiological effect actually occurs. In an ideal world, we want to know when the order is issued, not just when it is carried out.
    Similar to the temporal problem with fMRI measurements, this lag time is a definitive shortcoming. Various human physical systems not only respond at different rates in comparison to each other; physiological responses in general can be dissimilar between different individuals; and even within one individual the complex of response rates may vary depending upon a whole host of factors (fatigue, medical conditions, environmental influences, and so forth).
    Although much effort has been put into adjusting and calibrating all these timing differences, to date it has not been scientifically feasible to “time link”
    all the body’s responses to stimuli with the brain’s original reactions in any consistent, reliable way. There are simply too many variations in the timing to do so.
    To sum up: Biometrics do not delineate between specialized brain responses.
    They provide a secondary, time-lagged, and confounded measure of arousal.
    They cannot stand alone as reliable indicators of emotion or cognition.
    This is not to say that biometric measurements cannot be useful. They can definitely serve as secondary, peripheral confirmations of what the brain has already registered and responded to. But make no mistake: they are not primary indicators of neurological activity—only direct electrical measures of brain activity can provide that data. And EEG is exactly that: The direct measure of electrical activity in the brain, registered at the true speed of thought.
    To illustrate the dichotomy between basic physiological reactions and active
    “thought,” consider that a comatose patient can still exhibit physical reactions to certain stimuli, like a loud hand clap. In other words, biometric response does not necessarily correspond with cognitive response, at either conscious or subconscious levels. The brain’s basic systems may still trigger a measurable response from the body’s physical systems—but that doesn’t alter the fact that the patient is still in a coma.

    P1: OTA/XYZ
    P2: ABC
    c02
    JWBT296-Pradeep
    June 5, 2010
    13:45
    Printer Name: Courier Westford, Westford, MA
    Neuromarketing Technology
    15
    The brain is where the initial, and most complex and meaningful, responses to