Are brain scans the next market research tool
By Kristen L. Phiel, MS Freelance Medical Writer
Wish you could read the minds of your latest market research participants?
Some of the latest research into the human mind may allow you to do just that. By combining brain scans with pattern-detection software neuroscientists now have a window into the human brain.
Called neural decoding, over the last several years, researchers have been able to use patterns in brain activity to successfully predict what pictures subjects are viewing, their location in a virtual environment and what decisions they are poised to make. At the recent Society of Neuroscience meeting in Chicago, scientists Jack Gallant and Shinji Nishimoto demonstrated that they could recreate moving images that volunteers were viewing and make guesses to what they were remembering.
How does neural decoding work? In Gallant and Nishimoto’s research, they mapped different patterns of activity in the visual cortex through brain scanning in study participants while they watched movies. A computer program then mapped different visual aspects of movies, such as shape, color, and movement. The program was fed more than 200 days worth of YouTube video clips to help program predictions for brain activity that each clip would produce in a viewer. When the participants then watched another movie while being scanned, the computer picked YouTube clips it predicted would create similar brain activity (as what was being recorded by participants) and merged these clips. The result: crude, blurry footage of a movie that the person was actually watching.
Other researches presented data showing that neural decoding could be used to read memories, future decisions and even to diagnose eating disorders. In research done by John-Dylan Haynes and colleague Ida Momennejad, they were able to use brain scans to predict intentions in subjects planning and performing simple tasks. While other researcher could predict which nouns, for example ‘celery’ or ‘airplane’, a subject was thinking.
Of course technology that could give such intimate details into information that you only you are thinking and could know is raising ethical concerns. Of specific concern is that advertisers, the government, or our employers might exploit this technology. Fortunately, neural decoding is currently limited in its abilities and applications. It only works if someone’s brain has already been scanned multiple times under very specific and controlled circumstances. However, if practical implications become more than just a figment of our imaginations – or brain activitiy – the ethical concerns should be considered now. We need to carefully consider what the technology can and cannot do and how it can be put to best use. For example, if the technology comes to fruition, we may be able to decode the thoughts of patients with neurodegenerative diseases, but we may also be able to deny employment based on an employee’s thoughts.
So, about mind reading the thoughts and decision process of your likely customer – for now, market research is still the most reliable way to gain information about a product or its newest advertising campaign, but maybe someday, all we will need are a few brain scans and the latest neural decoding software.
Want to know more, please check out these links about neural decoding and brain imaging:
http://www.technologyreview.com/tag.aspx?id=894&aid=21553
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090210092730.htm
