Wed 26 Mar 2008
WIRED ran an interesting piece that suggests increasingly invasive brain technologies will become a legal battleground. The more obvious areas have already been discussed here and elsewhere: using brain scans as lie detectors or to see if an individual recognizes someone or something (as part of a legal investigation, perhaps). That could be just the beginning, though. (more…)
Fri 14 Mar 2008
Are the non-medical applications of fMRI and other brain imaging technology overrated, or are we seeing the birth of a major new field of study? Ofri Ilani and Yotam Feldman of Haaretz have written a lengthy survey piece that starts by describing some of the current and planned brain imaging centers in Israel and segues into a lengthy and detailed discussion of the pros and cons of neuroimaging technology. There is even a section on neuromarketing: (more…)
Mon 7 Jan 2008
What’s the next big frontier in pharmaceutical marketing? Blockbuster drugs seem harder to develop these days, and it’s getting more difficult to sell minor tweaks to old products as major breakthroughs. It’s even getting more challenging to talk to physicians, as many of the old ploys to get face time (expensive meals, honoraria, etc.) are being abandoned. These days, it seems, pharma companies have been reduced to trying to convince consumers they suffer from obscure maladies like “restless leg syndrome.” The Holy Grail of new products would be a drug that could be used by anyone, and that is so attractive that consumers will flock to their physicians to demand it. Could that drug be a cognitive enhancer? Enter the brave new world of cosmetic neurology… (more…)
Thu 8 Nov 2007
There’s more proof that the hormone oxytocin is an important factor in our social behavior. Previously, the brain chemical was shown to be associated with trust (see Building Trust: Chemical Neuromarketing). Now, researcher Paul Zak, a professor of economics and director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, has shown that subjects who inhaled oxytocin gave away 80% more money than subjects who inhaled a placebo. (more…)
Thu 11 Oct 2007
Decision making is emerging as a key area of neuroscience research. Neuroeconomics and neuromarketing are informed by brain scan data and other studies of how people make decisions, and now Vanderbilt University is the home for a major new study of how legal decisions are influenced by neurological processes.
The first-of-its-kind project, which is a collaboration between researchers at Vanderbilt and more than two dozen other universities, is funded by a $10 million dollar grant given by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Vanderbilt professor Owen Jones, who is one of the nation’s few professors of both law and biology, helped procure the grant and was appointed co-director of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Decision-Making, which is one of the three networks within the Law and Neuroscience Project.
His network will explore decision making related to complex issues surrounding criminal intent. The other two branches will explore the roles of brain abnormalities and addiction as it relates to criminal behavior and criminal responsibility.
Jones and the “decision-making” team will examine decisions that lead to criminal behavior – what aspect of the brain prompts a person to switch from law-abiding to law-breaking? This research will, in essence, explore the neurological side of things such as emotion, choice, risk, inhibition and temptation.
The team will also look into decisions legal experts, such as judges, juries, witnesses and lawyers, make about crime and punishment. The researchers will analyze the brain to see if biases based on race, sex or ethnicity can be detected and they will investigate how jurors react to different kinds of evidence. [From Vanderbilt leads breakthrough study on law and neuroscience; Vanderbilt researchers share $10 million MacArthur Grant.]
While marketers aren’t likely to benefit directly from this work, a big injection of research money into studying the neuroscience of decision making is bound to light a fire under other research efforts around the US and internationally. As far as we know, this $10 million study is the biggest ever in the field of neuroscience and decision making.
Thu 15 Feb 2007
There has been interest in neuroethics for years - the ethical dilemmas involved in everything from brain scans to cognitive enhancement drugs have been long apparent to neuroscientists. Recent research seems to have brought renewed attention the field, as reported in Reuters: Call for “neuroethics” as brain science races ahead. I suppose the mere fact that the big news agency put the word in quotes indicates that for a lot of people neuroethics is a brand-new concept.
The same discoveries that could help the paralyzed use brain signals to steer a wheelchair or write on a computer might also be used to detect possible criminal intent, religious beliefs or other hidden thoughts, these neuroethicists say. “The potential for misuse of this technology is profound,” said Judy Illes, director of the Stanford University neuroethics program in California. “This is a truly urgent situation.”
The new boost came from a research paper published last week that showed neuroscientists can now not only locate the brain area where a certain thought occurs but probe into that area to read out some kinds of thought occurring there. Its author, John-Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, compared this to learning how to read books after simply being able to find them before. “That is a huge step,” he said.
While experts agree that we are a long way from reading people’s thoughts, even the remote possibility has caught the interest of those who worry about the misuse of technology and science. Of course, neuromarketing is one of the usual suspects, with visions of unethical marketers developing super-ads that will turn consumers into mindless drones. (We’ve noted many times that such super-ads are highly unlikely - with many decades of ad development experience and millions of unique ads behind us, surely some would already have been developed.) Even neuroscientists have some neuromarketing concerns, though, as indicated in the Reuters story:
Haynes estimated his research into unspoken intentions could yield simple applications within the next 5 to 10 years, such as reading a person’s attitude to a company during a job interview or testing consumer preferences through “neuromarketing.” …
“If you’re reading out something for neuromarketing or job interviews, or doing this against people’s wills, that could be considered unethical,” Haynes said.
It isn’t really clear to me what Haynes is considering unethical, particularly since he notes that neuromarketing could be a useful tool in determining consumer preferences. Indeed, this may be one of the areas where neuromarketing can make its most valuable contribution - not picking the best TV commercial, but rather helping product development teams come up with products that really satisfy their consumers. Currently, such decisions are made using guesswork, past market data, focus groups, and the like - tapping into consumer’s real feelings could lead to measurably better products in some categories.
Still, even though the super-ad bogeyman will pop up from time to time, we’re all in favor of a lively neuroethics debate. There are many topics of real concern with today’s rapid advances in neuroscience, and keeping ethical guidelines in pace with science (preferably, anticipating the breakthroughs rather than reacting to them) will be important indeed. We don’t really see much potential for conflict between proper use of neuroscience in marketing and ethical considerations.
Mon 18 Dec 2006
A church-based site, Vision.org, has published an interesting and thoughtful article by Thomas E. Fitzpatrick, Are We in Need of a Neuromorality? The article covers some of the same issues discussed in more detail in the book, Hard Science, Hard Choices by Sandra J. Ackerman, but is based largely on the comments of Martha J. Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. Some of the topics include the ethics of attempting to predict criminal behavior with neuroscience, whether society should concern itself with pharmaceutical enhancement of cognitive activity, whether addictions are diseases, etc.
Although the article couches the discussion in terms of “neuromorality,” in fact the topics are the same ones being debated by those interested in neuroethics. Fitzpatrick doesn’t explore a lot of new territory for those familiar with neuroethics debates, his article is a good primer for the newcomer to the field. If the topics of discussion seem intriguing, Ackerman’s book would be an excellent next step to understand what the experts in these areas think the controversies will be and - occasionally - how they might be resolved.
It is significant that the title of the article, “Are We in Need of a Neuromorality?”, is itself a question. As with most writing about the burgeoning field of neuroethics, the article raises plenty of questions but offers few answers.
Thu 7 Dec 2006
Meeting notes from a neuroethics conference hardly seem like fodder for book club meetings, but Hard Science, Hard Choices by Sandra J. Ackerman (Dana Press, 2006, 174 pages) is likely to produce far more spirited discussion than the latest Oprah selection. Ackerman has rendered a readable summary of the discussion at an unusual meeting of experts in neuroscience, law, public policy, and philosophy; the meeting, held at the Library of Congress, discussed and debated a great variety of issues involving brain science and how progress in that field would soon be creating novel ethical dilemmas.
Fortunately for the lay reader, Hard Science, Hard Choices isn’t a verbatim transcript of these proceedings. Ackerman has neatly summarized the discussions in a very readable text. She manages to preserve the key elements of each topic and present them in a way that is clear and thought provoking. The expanding family of brain-altering drugs is one such topic. What is treatment, and what is enhancement? And when is it acceptable to take a drug purely for enhancement? Currently, some golfers and musicians take beta blockers to quiet the normal tremors in their hands. Another drug, tolcapone, has been found to improve cogitive performance on complex tasks. Stimulants used to treat conditions like ADHD have been shown to improve the performance of “normal” subjects when taking tests. Pharmaceutical companies are working on a host of drugs that alter the way the brain processes dopamine, seratonin, and other natural elements of brain chemistry. Very soon, we will be faced with a plethora of decisions as to what is “normal”, what is a condition that should be treated, and what types of pharmaceutical enhancement may be acceptable.
For those who think the ethics of enhancement drugs are simple, the book offers the interesting example of a not all that hypothetical drug that has been found to reduce tremors in a neurosurgeon’s hands and improve mental focus. Would individuals opposed to drugs used purely for enhancement prefer to be operated on by a neurosurgeon who didn’t use the drug, even if the statistics showed better outcomes for the “enhanced” doctors?
The increasing use of neuroimaging is covered in depth, with one key topic being the determination of consciousness. The contentious Terry Schiavo case, in which different family members for a comatose patient fought over the removal of life support, serves as a backdrop for this discussion. There may be as many as 15,000 patients in the U.S. alone who are in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), and as many in a minimally conscious state (MCS). Neuroscience in general and neuroimaging in particular is being called upon to determine the level of consciousness of these patients, and to assess the chances for a return to a conscious state.
The use of neuroimaging as a perfect lie detector is covered briefly. Some neuroscientists believe that certain areas of the brain are activated when telling the truth, and others when telling a lie. While published research may not fully support this conclusion, the ever-improving resolution of fMRI and other scanning technology, along with increased understanding of how the brain works, may lead to an effective lie detection technique in the future. Should such technology be employed if it can be demonstrated to be accurate? If so, under what circumstances?
Other topics include the use of powerful pharmaceuticals to treat misbehaving children, the use of deep brain stimulation with electrodes to treat medical and psychological conditions, and the use of neuroscreening to predict the future probability of violent behavior. This book is a quick read, but offers plenty of food for thought. If your book club is the least bit interested in medical and political topics, there are guaranteed to be a few issues raised in Hard Science, Hard Choices that will keep the members arguing long after the petit fours are gone.
Fri 13 Oct 2006
The Prague Post, a popular English-language weekly in the Czech Republic, ran both an article, Picking Your Brain, and an opinion piece, On the brains (and ethics) of neuroplanning, on the topic of neuromarketing. The former covers the launch of a neuroscience-based media planning effort being launched by European media planning firm PHD Network.
With the help of consultants, including the pioneering and sometimes controversial brain research firm Neurosense, PHD is rolling out a new suite of media-planning tools in Prague, which includes a component called “neuroplanning.”Traditional media planning — deciding where to place ads on radio, television, Internet and other media — has long been based on intuition, says Mark Holden, planning director at PHD UK and key member of the neuroplanning development team. Such planning makes use of “clever people coming up with intuitive guesses,” he says, who then “use data to corroborate their choices.” However, private studies by PHD have shown that the choices of media planners are often biased by personal preference. If the planner is a devotee of sitcom reruns, he’ll recommend television; if she wakes up every morning to a folded copy of the International Herald Tribune, it’s print.
To counteract this, PHD fastened itself to developments in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and cognitive psychology.
The article does make some odd statements about seasonal Christmas advertisements being targeted “straight to the short term memory” - hardly an effective strategy in the context of what most psychologists would consider “short term.” But the article includes some good explanation of the neuromarketing concept, and discusses some of the limitations of neuromarketing in the Czech Republic:
The Prague office’s use of neuroplanning banks on the belief that the Czech and British experience media similarly. Neurosense’s research was limited to an undisclosed number of British subjects, and Calvert says the firm has not explicitly studied possible differences between nationalities. She expects them to be few.The cost of repeating the study in the Czech Republic is prohibitive — access to fMRI machines must be purchased from universities and hospitals at a premium rate.
The editorial piece examines neuromarketing from an ethical standpoint. Although it includes the mandatory adjective for all such pieces, “Orwellian,” the tone of the editorial isn’t overwhelmingly negative or alarmist. In fact, the stateement, “If Unilever and DaimlerChrysler are shelling out to put test consumers into a pod at a high-tech medical center, any serious global marketing maven had better do the same.” might be construed as bullish were it not for a hint of irony. The editorial ends by pointing out the potential financial benefits to hospitals and universities if marketers flock to rent their expensive fMRI facilities, though it notes that the donors who funded the costly hardware may look askance at using them to develop more effective advertising.
Fri 23 Jun 2006
Every little while, a neuroalarmist rant pops up in the blogosphere, almost always from someone who read an article about neuromarketing and concludes, “My goodness - now they’ll manipulate my brain into buying all kinds of stuff I don’t want or need!” (Latest example: Neuromarketing - a Growing Menace.) While one might argue that marketers have been doing that for decades, if not centuries, the reality is that marketers are using brain scans for product refinement and avoiding clunker ad campaigns. Whether the art and science of neuromarketing will ever achieve unprecedented levels of brain manipulation seems unlikely, but what about product optimization?
While the techniques are still in their infancy, we do know that product developers are trying to use fMRI and other data to gauge consumer reaction to their offerings - we recently covered neuromarketing in the movie business. While some of their efforts are geared to evaluating ads or trailers, movie execs are also testing the product itself. At our current level of knowledge, the challenge is interpreting the data. If you are making a movie intended to be a tear-jerker, what conclusions do you draw when different areas of the brain light up? How sad is too sad? Which brain areas need to be activated to get a viewer to like the movie enough to recommend it to a friend, or see it again? As Quartz and others collect more data, some of these answers may start to emerge.
Let’s jump ahead to a not-too-distant future when we actually do have a good understanding of what makes a product desirable, whether it’s a television show or a fast food item. At this point, brain scans have also become easier and cheaper, so we aren’t limited to testing a tiny number of subjects. Is there an ethical problem with neuro-optimizing one’s product? Say, for example, that a chain restaurant is introducing a new pasta entree. In a series of tests, they have hundreds of subjects sample different versions of the product. A dozen different noodle styles are tested, and two tortellini-style noodles produce the best results. So, another batch of noodle designs, with relatively minor variations on the tortellini look, are tested, resulting in a clear preference for a smaller size and somewhat elongated appearance. The process is repeated for the sauce, testing levels of spice, sugar, salt, and so on, until a recipe is found that maximizes activation of the appropriate brain areas. Finally, the process is repeated for the presentation of the dish, resulting in a neuro-optimized pasta dish. As a final test, the new dish is compared to comparable offerings from competing restaurant chains; the final series of scans confirms what the product developers expected - the new dish lights up the areas of the brain responsible for food preference far better than the competition. The chefs, neuroscientists, and marketers break out the bubbly - they have developed SuperPasta.
Some people might find this frightening and Orwellian. Others might find it incredibly exciting. Neuroalarmists will no doubt have visions of an entire population becoming addicted to SuperPasta, or spending the entire night hyupnotized by the same neuro-optimized television program. That simply won’t happen. Let’s look at the likely reality of a hypothetical product like this. First, using brain scans isn’t that much different than conventional taste testing - it just takes the inaccuracies and uncertainties of self-reporting out of the process (assuming that we can establish the brain areas responsible for food preferences, and also determine what kind of activity in those areas is optimum). Second, it’s extremely likely that differences between individuals will make any optimization process aim for smaller target markets. Quite simply, my SuperPasta might be very different from your SuperPasta; a spicy sauce might max out my food preference areas, but cause yours to shut down.
In reality, just as with brain-scan based evaluation of ads, neuro-optimization is highly unlikely to result in “super” products. Rather, it will serve to avoid costly introductions of products doomed to fail. All the neuroscience in the world wouldn’t improve a movie like Titanic enough to sell twice as many tickets; rather, some early fMRI work might have served notice that Gigli was a movie destined to sink quickly. The same applies to food - through centuries of trial and error, humans have produced many food items that no doubt light up the brain like a Roman candle. While brain scans may help avoid product fiascos like McDonald’s Big Arch, they simply aren’t going to produce addictive superfoods.
In short, we should welcome the age of neuro-optimization when it arrives. We can expect to see more appealing products, and fewer bad ones. Due to the diversity of human nature and preferences, though, we still won’t like everything we see; we can only hope that clever marketers find a way to get us the neuro-optimized products we’ll find most useful and enjoyable.
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