March 2008

Most market researchers earn their living by asking questions - what people did, why they did it, what they might do in the future, and so on. The methodology varies - focus groups, Web surveys, interviews, etc. - but in most cases the…

Last week I did an interview with Robin Young of Here & Now, a radio show distributed by Public Radio International and aired on about 50 U.S. stations. The topic was the use of neuromarketing to evaluate political ads, and also…

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…

Popular books like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, not to mention generations of comedians, have played up the differences between males and females. Researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Haifa have found…

Berkeley neuroscientists report that they have been able to identify images subjects looked at solely by analyzing fMRI scans of the subjects' brains. Jack Gallant and his team at the University of California Berkeley published their…

East Asian subjects process a picture differently than their North American counterparts, according to a study published this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study used both eye tracking and conventional…

OK, I admit it... if this story was about rats and food pellets, it wouldn't be particularly compelling. But when scientists decide to see what your brain does while it's looking at Krispy Kreme donuts, that's news! Neuroscientists at…

The common belief is that neuromarketing is trying to find the mythical "buy button" in the brain. If you are an ecommerce web designer, though, the "buy button" is one thing you want to be sure your visitors can find very easily! One…

Hot on the heels of learning that more expensive wine tastes better, we find that more expensive placebos are more effective at controlling pain:

South Korean researchers have conducted an fMRI study that shows that perfume can arouse some men. Shocking news, eh? Eight healthy right-handed heterosexual male volunteers (20-35 years of age), having normal olfaction and no brain…