Defining neuromarketing: practices and professional challenges

Unraveling neural pathways of political engagement: bridging neuromarketing and political science for understanding voter behavior and political leader perception

Introduction

Political neuromarketing is an emerging interdisciplinary field integrating marketing, neuroscience, and psychology to decipher voter behavior and political leader perception. This interdisciplinary field offers novel techniques to understand complex phenomena such as voter engagement, political leadership, and party branding.

Methods

This study aims to understand the neural activation patterns of voters when they are exposed to political leaders using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and machine learning methods. We recruited participants and recorded their brain activity using fNIRS when they were exposed to images of different political leaders.

Results

This neuroimaging method (fNIRS) reveals brain regions central to brand perception, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Machine learning methods were used to predict the participants' perceptions of leaders based on their brain activity. The study has identified the brain regions that are involved in processing political stimuli and making judgments about political leaders. Within this study, the best-performing machine learning model, LightGBM, achieved a highest accuracy score of 0.78, underscoring its efficacy in predicting voters' perceptions of political leaders based on the brain activity of the former.

Discussion

The findings from this study provide new insights into the neural basis of political decision-making and the development of effective political marketing campaigns while bridging neuromarketing, political science, and machine learning, in turn enabling predictive insights into voter preferences and behavior.

Consumer Visual and Affective Bias for Soothing Dolls

Soothing dolls are becoming increasingly popular in a society with a lot of physical and mental stress. Many products are also combined with soothing dolls to stimulate consumers' desire for impulse buying. However, there is no research on the relationship between consumers' purchasing behavior, consumers' preference for soothing dolls, and visual preference. The purpose of this study was to examine the possible factors that affect the emotional and visual preferences of soothing dolls. Two local stores' sales lists were used to extract three different types of dolls. The 2D and 3D versions of these three dolls were used. Subjective emotional preferences were examined by the self-assessment manikin (SAM) scale, with 5-point Likert scales for valence and arousal factors. An eye tracker was used to examine visual preferences, both before and after positive/negative emotion stimulation by the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). There were 37 subjects involved, with an age range of 20-28 years. The experimental results show that the average valence/arousal scores for 2D/3D dolls were (3.80, 3.74) and (2.65, 2.68), respectively. There was no statistical difference, but both 2D and 3D pictures had high valence scores. Eye tracker analysis revealed no gaze difference in visual preference between 2D and 3D dolls. After negative emotional picture stimulation, the observation time of the left-side doll decreased from 2.307 (std 0.905) to 1.947 (std 1.038) seconds, p < 0.001; and that of the right-side picture increased from 1.898 (std 0.907) to 2.252 (std 1.046) seconds, p < 0.001. The average observation time ratio of the eye on the 3D doll was 40.6%, higher than that on the 2D doll (34.3%, p = 0.02). Soothing dolls may be beneficial for emotion relaxation. Soothing dolls always have high valence features according to the SAM evaluation's measurement. Moreover, this study proposes a novel research model using an eye-tracker and the SAM for the SOR framework.

How does price variance among purchase channels affect consumers’ cognitive process when shopping online?

The rise of a flourishing online shopping market has expanded the range of purchase channels available to consumers. Meanwhile, the competition among channels has become increasingly fierce. In this study, the changes in cognitive processes caused by price variance among channels were investigated using event-related potentials. Several daily necessities with low or high price variance between a self-operated business channel and third-party seller channels were chosen as the study objects from a well-known electronic business platform. Thirty participants’ electroencephalograms were collected while they faced higher or lower price variance during the experiment. The results showed that small price variances between the two channels tended to intensify component N2, while big price variances tended to diminish component P3. These results suggest that N2 may reflect consumers’ identification process for price variance and inhibition of a planned response, while P3 may reflect the activation of attention caused by task difficulty due to price variance. These findings indicate that the changes in ERP components N2 and P3 may act as cognitive indices that measure customers’ identification and attention distribution when considering product price variances among online purchase channels.

Bibliometric-Based Evaluation of the Neuromarketing Research Trend: 2010–2021

Neuromarketing has become a new and important topic in the field of marketing in recent years. Consumer behavior research has received increasing attention. In the past decade, the importance of marketing has also been recognized in many fields such as consumer behavior, advertising, information systems, and e-commerce. Neuromarketing uses neurological methods to determine the driving forces behind consumers’ choices. Various neuroscience tools, such as eye movements, have been adopted to help reveal how consumers react to particular advertisements or objects. This information can be used as the basis for new advertising campaigns and brand promotions. To effectively explore the research trends in this field, we must understand the current situation of neuromarketing. A systematic bibliometric analysis can solve this problem by providing publishing trends and information on various topics. In this study, journals that focused on neuromarketing in the field of marketing between 2010 and 2021 were analyzed. These journals were core journals rated by the Association of Business Schools with three or more stars. According to the data analysis results, neuromarketing has 15 main journals with relevant papers. Based on the data collected by the Web of Science (WOS), this study mainly collected 119 references and analyzed the most productive countries, universities, authors, journals, and prolific publications in the field of neuromarketing via Citespace. Through the analysis of knowledge maps, this study explored the mapping of co-citation, bibliographic coupling (BC), and co-occurrence (CC). Moreover, the strongest citation bursts were used to study popular research at different time stages and analyze the research trends of neuromarketing research methods and tools. This study provides an overview of the trends and paths in neuromarketing, which can help researchers understand global trends and future research directions.

Use of Consumer Neuroscience in the Choice of Aromatisation as Part of the Shopping Atmosphere and a Way to Increase Sales Volume

The point of purchase is considered to be one of the few communication channels that is not yet saturated, and it has a relatively large potential for the future. A pleasant smell is also part of the shopping atmosphere. How smell affects customer behaviour and purchasing decisions is addressed by a relatively young scientific field, one of the existing kinds of sensory marketing—aroma marketing, otherwise called aromachology. Smell has mainly a subconscious influence; therefore, its examination is appropriate to be carried out using consumer neuroscience tools. This paper examined the perception of the shopping atmosphere in Slovak grocery shops and comprehensive interdisciplinary research on the impact of selected aromatic compounds on the cognitive and affective processes of the consumer, as well as the evaluation of the effectiveness of their implementation in food retail establishments. At the end of the paper, we recommend the possibilities of effective selection and the implementation of aromatisation of different premises, by which the retailer can achieve not only a more positive perception of the shopping atmosphere, but also an increase in retail turnover in individual sales sections.

The Neuromarketing Concept in Artificial Neural Networks: A Case of Forecasting and Simulation from the Advertising Industry

This research aims to examine a neural network (artificial intelligence) as an alternative model to examine the neuromarketing phenomenon. Neuromarketing is comparatively new as a technique for designing marketing strategies, especially advertising campaigns. Marketers have used a variety of different neuromarketing tools, for instance functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), eye tracking, electroencephalography (EEG), steady-state probe topography (SSPT), and other expensive gadgets. Similarly, researchers have been using these devices to carry out their studies. Therefore, neuromarketing has been an expensive project for both companies and researchers. We employed 585 human responses and used the neural network (artificial intelligence) technique to examine the predictive consumer buying behavior of an effective advertisement. For this purpose, we employed two neural network applications (artificial intelligence) to examine consumer buying behavior, first taken from a 1–5 Likert scale. A second application was run to examine the predicted consumer buying behavior in light of the neuromarketing phenomenon. The findings suggest that a neural network (artificial intelligence) is a unique, cost-effective, and powerful alternative to traditional neuromarketing tools. This study has significant theoretical and practical implications for future researchers and brand managers in the service and manufacturing sectors.

Choice Hygiene for "Consumer Neuroscientists"? Ethical Considerations and Proposals for Future Endeavours

Is the use of psychological and neuroscientific methods for neuromarketing research always aligned with the principles of ethical research practice? Some neuromarketing endeavours have passed from informing consumers about available options, to helping to market as many products to consumers as possible. Needs are being engineered, using knowledge about the human brain to increase consumption further, regardless of individual, societal and environmental needs and capacities. In principle, the ground ethical principle of any scientist is to further individual, societal and environmental health and well-being with their work. If their findings can be used for the opposite, this must be part of the scientist's considerations before engaging in such research and to make sure that the risks for misuse are minimised. Against this backdrop, we provide a series of real-life examples and a non-exhaustive literature review, to discuss in what way some practices in the neuromarketing domain may violate the Helsinki Declaration of Experimentation with Human Subjects. This declaration was set out to regulate biomedical research, but has since its inception been applied internationally also to behavioural and social research. We illustrate, point by point, how these ground ethical principles should be applied also to the neuromarketing domain. Indisputably, the growth in consumption is required due to current prevalent economical models. Thus, in the final part of the paper, we discuss how alternative models may be promotable to a larger public, aided by more ethical marketing endeavours, based on neuroscientific discoveries about the human brain. We propose this as a philosophical question, a point of discussion for the future, to make neuromarketing as a discipline, fit for the future, respecting the ethical implications of this research.

How Does the Implicit Awareness of Consumers Influence the Effectiveness of Public Service Announcements? A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

A large number of scholars have conducted detailed studies on the effectiveness of commercial advertising by using neuroimaging methods, but only a few scholars have used this method to study the effectiveness of public service announcements (PSAs). To research the relationship between the effectiveness of PSAs and the audience’s implicit awareness, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was employed to record the neural activity data of participants in this study. The results showed that there was a correlation between activation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the effectiveness of PSAs; The activation of the dlPFC could also be used as an indicator to represent the appeal of advertising content. The results means that neuroimaging tool can also be used to investigate the effectiveness of PSAs, not just commercial advertisements and a few PSAs study, and that neural activity can predict and improve the effectiveness of PSAs before they are released.

Effectiveness of Electricity-Saving Communication Campaigns: Neurophysiological Approach

Public communication campaigns are among the tools for promoting electricity saving. A crucial task in the process of creating a campaign is to design a simple message to effectively reach the average consumer. It is a beneficial practice to create alternative messages and pretest them to find the most effective. The research methodology during pretesting includes both quantitative and qualitative methods. However, it is believed that the outcomes obtained with the use of conventional techniques are not fully reliable. Therefore, the following question arises: What additional research methods should be applied at the stage of testing the message of a communication campaign so that its effectiveness can be assessed more reliably and/or improved even before its broadcast? In this study, we aim to present the possibility of applying cognitive neuroscience methods in conjunction with a questionnaire to experimentally check the effectiveness of the message using the example of selected electricity-saving communication campaigns. The key results of this study indicate that merging conscious and subconscious reactions to media messages allows us to gain new knowledge that can be used in the future to improve the communication campaign effectiveness. Our investigation showed the benefits that can be obtained by synergizing traditional research methods with neuroscientific approaches.

Neuroimaging Techniques in Advertising Research: Main Applications, Development, and Brain Regions and Processes

Despite the advancement in neuroimaging tools, studies about using neuroimaging tools to study the impact of advertising on brain regions and processes are scant and remain unclear in academic literature. In this article, we have followed a literature review methodology and a bibliometric analysis to select empirical and review papers that employed neuroimaging tools in advertising campaigns and to understand the global research trends in the neuromarketing domain. We extracted and analyzed sixty-three articles from the Web of Science database to answer our study questions. We found four common neuroimaging techniques employed in advertising research. We also found that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex play a vital role in decision-making processes. The OFC is linked to positive valence, and the lateral OFC and left dorsal anterior insula related in negative valence. In addition, the thalamus and primary visual area associated with the bottom-up attention system, whereas the top-down attention system connected to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, and primary visual areas. For memory, the hippocampus is responsible for generating and processing memories. We hope that this study provides valuable insights about the main brain regions and processes of interest for advertising.

Shining a Light also Casts a Shadow: Neuroimaging Incidental Findings in Neuromarketing Research

Rapid growth in structural and functional brain research has led to increasing ethical discussion of what to do about incidental findings within the brains of healthy neuroimaging research participants that have potential health importance, but which are beyond the original aims of the study. This dilemma has been widely debated with respect to general neuroimaging research but has attracted little attention in the context of neuromarketing studies. In this paper, I argue that neuromarketing researchers owe participants the same ethical obligations as other neuroimaging researchers. The financial resources available to neuromarketing firms and the social value of neuromarketing studies should command greater attention to the elucidation and management of incidental findings. However, this needs to be balanced against finite resources available within most public health systems.

Neurogastronomy as a Tool for Evaluating Emotions and Visual Preferences of Selected Food Served in Different Ways

The appearance of food provides certain expectations regarding the harmonization of taste, delicacy, and overall quality, which subsequently affects not only the intake itself but also many other features of the behavior of customers of catering facilities. The main goal of this article is to find out what effect the visual design of food (waffles) prepared from the same ingredients and served in three different ways-a stone plate, street food style, and a white classic plate-has on the consumer's preferences. In addition to the classic tablet assistance personal interview (TAPI) tools, biometric methods such as eye tracking and face reading were used in order to obtain unconscious feedback. During testing, air quality in the room by means of the Extech device and the influence of the visual design of food on the perception of its smell were checked. At the end of the paper, we point out the importance of using classical feedback collection techniques (TAPI) and their extension in measuring subconscious reactions based on monitoring the eye movements and facial expressions of the respondents, which provides a whole new perspective on the perception of visual design and serving food as well as more effective targeting and use of corporate resources.

Marketing in social innovations targeted at healthcare

The paper deals with the implementation of marketing in social innovations, types of marketing, and the effects they can bring in the sphere of social innovations. The principalaim of the paper is to explain the possibilities of marketing approach implementation in social innovations and point out some specific areas of marketing which can contribute to more efficient applicability of social innovations and reaching a desirable change with social added value. The authors focused on the sphere of health and the population attitudes to its protection, emphasizing breast carcinoma prevention. The research was implemented on a sample of Slovak women to identify the level of women’s awareness of this issue, whether they are familiar with the methods of protecting their health and whether they use them. This study involved the methods of cluster analysis and binary logistic regression. The research uncovered the facts that are truly alarming from the perspective of societal benefit and women’s health protection. The respondents’ insufficient awareness and low activity in the field of their health protection result in the low level of prevention in this area on the side of women and on the side of medical doctors – specialists, particularly gynecologists. Such a situation includes the women’s insufficient awareness of prevention, low motivation, insufficient accessibility and validity of the needed data and precision, and doctor specialists’ lack of awareness of the possibilities and tools available to improve this area. That is exactly the space allowing for the use of marketing in a whole spectrum of its tools and processes and specific solutions capable of delivering the desired societal change and influencing women’s behavior in the preferred direction. Besides, it is especially effective to implement social marketing and social marketing programs that would mediate necessary information to the receivers and stimulate their motivation towards the desired approach to their health protection. The use of neuromarketing would be beneficial. It would be reflected in the better accuracy of the survey and thus the higher quality of the answers obtained. Based on them, it is subsequently possible to create better-targeted campaigns and strategies of social marketing that would approach the target audience more effectively than in acquiring the information via traditional marketing research methods. The findings would benefit marketing agencies, medical doctors (gynecologists, mammologists), and non-profit organizations actively working in this field.

Beyond Technologies of Electroencephalography-Based Brain-Computer Interfaces: A Systematic Review From Commercial and Ethical Aspects

The deployment of electroencephalographic techniques for commercial applications has undergone a rapid growth in recent decades. As they continue to expand in the consumer markets as suitable techniques for monitoring the brain activity, their transformative potential necessitates equally significant ethical inquiries. One of the main questions, which arises then when evaluating these kinds of applications, is whether they should be aligned or not with the main ethical concerns reported by scholars and experts. Thus, the present work attempts to unify these disciplines of knowledge by performing a comprehensive scan of the major electroencephalographic market applications as well as their most relevant ethical concerns arising from the existing literature. In this literature review, different databases were consulted, which presented conceptual and empirical discussions and findings about commercial and ethical aspects of electroencephalography. Subsequently, the content was extracted from the articles and the main conclusions were presented. Finally, an external assessment of the outcomes was conducted in consultation with an expert panel in some of the topic areas such as biomedical engineering, biomechatronics, and neuroscience. The ultimate purpose of this review is to provide a genuine insight into the cutting-edge practical attempts at electroencephalography. By the same token, it seeks to highlight the overlap between the market needs and the ethical standards that should govern the deployment of electroencephalographic consumer-grade solutions, providing a practical approach that overcomes the engineering myopia of certain ethical discussions.

What Can Neuromarketing Tell Us about Food Packaging?

Packaging is a powerful tool for brands, which can not only catch consumers' attention but also influence their purchase decisions. The application of neuromarketing techniques to the study of food packaging has recently gained considerable popularity both in academia and practice, but there are still some concerns about the methods and metrics commercially offered and the interpretation of their findings. This represents the motivation of this investigation, whose objective is twofold: (1) to analyze the methodologies and measurements commonly used in neuromarketing commercial research on packaging, and (2) to examine the extent to which the results of food packaging studies applying neuromarketing techniques can be reproduced under similar methodologies. Obtained results shed light on the application of neuromarketing techniques in the evaluation of food packaging and reveal that neuromarketing and declarative methodologies are complementary, and its combination may strengthen the studies' results. Additionally, this study highlights the importance of having a framework that improves the validity and reliability of neuromarketing studies to eradicate mistrust toward the discipline and provide brands with valuable insights into food packing design.

Picking Your Brains: Where and How Neuroscience Tools Can Enhance Marketing Research

The use of neuroscience tools to study consumer behavior and the decision making process in marketing has improved our understanding of cognitive, neuronal, and emotional mechanisms related to marketing-relevant behavior. However, knowledge about neuroscience tools that are used in consumer neuroscience research is scattered. In this article, we present the results of a literature review that aims to provide an overview of the available consumer neuroscience tools and classifies them according to their characteristics. We analyse a total of 219 full-texts in the area of consumer neuroscience. Our findings suggest that there are seven tools that are currently used in consumer neuroscience research. In particular, electroencephalography (EEG) and eye tracking (ET) are the most commonly used tools in the field. We also find that consumer neuroscience tools are used to study consumer preferences and behaviors in different marketing domains such as advertising, branding, online experience, pricing, product development and product experience. Finally, we identify two ready-to-use platforms, namely iMotions and GRAIL that can help in integrating the measurements of different consumer neuroscience tools simultaneously. Measuring brain activity and physiological responses on a common platform could help by (1) reducing time and costs for experiments and (2) linking cognitive and emotional aspects with neuronal processes. Overall, this article provides relevant input in setting directions for future research and for business applications in consumer neuroscience. We hope that this study will provide help to researchers and practitioners in identifying available, non-invasive and useful tools to study consumer behavior.

Situation of Neuromarketing Consulting in Spain

The latest research in Spain indicates that the most advanced neuromarketing consulting companies in the sector are those that have been able to innovate in the development of their own technologies and methodologies. Despite their reduced volume of business compared to total investment in marketing and market research in our country, there are signs that suggest these companies have great potential to improve this sector, which is still to be explored. For this reason, this research straddling the ethnographic method and the theoretical-descriptive method aims to help us better understand the characteristic features of this sector by actively listening to the professional voices that lead it. Its epistemological value lies in its contribution to understanding the business culture related to the professional development of neuromarketing in our country today. The study shows that the main human resources strategy of neuromarketing consulting companies is based on the creation of multidisciplinary work teams. In addition, most of them develop data analysis software, which they can safeguard under various types of copyright, and on other occasions they manage to patent them, to later apply them to the objectives and purposes of their company. This would also explain the widespread use of certain procedures and resources by the vast majority of the consulting companies investigated. Thus, the trend in the market is the implementation of different synchronization software to the available technological and methodological resources. Others have even gone so far as to create a new technological support to incorporate methodologies already in use. Therefore, this gives them exclusivity in their services and the necessary competitive advantage over their competitors. Among other factors, these inferences about how this sector really works are very likely to be very useful in the academic field, which will constitute a further step in generating critical thinking and in expanding the frontiers of knowledge around this discipline.

Neuromarketing as an Emotional Connection Tool Between Organizations and Audiences in Social Networks. A Theoretical Review

Currently, there is an important debate on how social networks have affected relations between organizations and their audiences: originally complementary –since organizations had full control over the messages that they sent to users, who were mere consumers of information–, they are now symmetric –since users produce and disseminate information about organizations on a global scale through social media–. Therefore, one of the main concerns of organizations when investing in social networks is to connect with their target audience, to have virality, greater visibility and scope. Likewise, neuromarketing is gaining significant importance when it comes to predicting user behavior through biometric measurements, so it can be an essential tool for developing content that engages organizations and their audiences. The main objective of this work is to conduct a theoretical review of the main scientific research on the effectiveness of neuromarketing as a tool to improve the emotional connection between organizations and users in social networks. Thus, the scientific literature on the object under study available on the Web Of Science has been extensively reviewed. The results of the analysis of the main researches in this field reveal the importance of neuromarketing: some of them agree that the communicative effectiveness between organizations and audiences in social networks depends more on sociology and psychology than on technology itself. Neuromarketing has also allowed to demonstrate the relevance of the so-called social influence in social networks: users tend to imitate the behaviors of others, under the premise that these actions reflect the appropriate procedure. That is, when a user sees that others in their environment comment or share a post, they tend to replicate that action in order to avoid the fear of being the only one who behaves differently.

Consumer Behaviour through the Eyes of Neurophysiological Measures: State-of-the-Art and Future Trends

The new technological advances achieved during the last decade allowed the scientific community to investigate and employ neurophysiological measures not only for research purposes but also for the study of human behaviour in real and daily life situations. The aim of this review is to understand how and whether neuroscientific technologies can be effectively employed to better understand the human behaviour in real decision-making contexts. To do so, firstly, we will describe the historical development of neuromarketing and its main applications in assessing the sensory perceptions of some marketing and advertising stimuli. Then, we will describe the main neuroscientific tools available for such kind of investigations (e.g., measuring the cerebral electrical or hemodynamic activity, the eye movements, and the psychometric responses). Also, this review will present different brain measurement techniques, along with their pros and cons, and the main cerebral indexes linked to the specific mental states of interest (used in most of the neuromarketing research). Such indexes have been supported by adequate validations from the scientific community and are largely employed in neuromarketing research. This review will also discuss a series of papers that present different neuromarketing applications, such us in-store choices and retail, services, pricing, brand perception, web usability, neuropolitics, evaluation of the food and wine taste, and aesthetic perception of artworks. Furthermore, this work will face the ethical issues arisen on the use of these tools for the evaluation of the human behaviour during decision-making tasks. In conclusion, the main challenges that neuromarketing is going to face, as well as future directions and possible scenarios that could be derived by the use of neuroscience in the marketing field, will be identified and discussed.

Virtual Reality in Marketing: A Framework, Review, and Research Agenda

Marketing scholars and practitioners are showing increasing interest in Extended Reality (XR) technologies (XRs), such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), as very promising technological tools for producing satisfactory consumer experiences that mirror those experienced in physical stores. However, most of the studies published to date lack a certain measure of methodological rigor in their characterization of XR technologies and in the assessment techniques used to characterize the consumer experience, which limits the generalization of the results. We argue that it is necessary to define a rigorous methodological framework for the use of XRs in marketing. This article reviews the literature on XRs in marketing, and provides a conceptual framework to organize this disparate body of work.

Frontal Brain Asymmetry and Willingness to Pay

Consumers frequently make decisions about how much they are willing to pay (WTP) for specific products and services, but little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying such calculations. In this study, we were interested in testing whether specific brain activation—the asymmetry in engagement of the prefrontal cortex—would be related to consumer choice. Subjects saw products and subsequently decided how much they were willing to pay for each product, while undergoing neuroimaging using electroencephalography. Our results demonstrate that prefrontal asymmetry in the gamma frequency band, and a trend in the beta frequency band that was recorded during product viewing was significantly related to subsequent WTP responses. Frontal asymmetry in the alpha band was not related to WTP decisions. Besides suggesting separate neuropsychological mechanisms of consumer choice, we find that one specific measure—the prefrontal gamma asymmetry—was most strongly related to WTP responses, and was most coupled to the actual decision phase. These findings are discussed in light of the psychology of WTP calculations, and in relation to the recent emergence of consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing.

Improving brain computer interface research through user involvement - The transformative potential of integrating civil society organisations in research projects

Research on Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) often aims to provide solutions for vulnerable populations, such as individuals with diseases, conditions or disabilities that keep them from using traditional interfaces. Such research thereby contributes to the public good. This contribution to the public good corresponds to a broader drive of research and funding policy that focuses on promoting beneficial societal impact. One way of achieving this is to engage with the public. In practical terms this can be done by integrating civil society organisations (CSOs) in research. The open question at the heart of this paper is whether and how such CSO integration can transform the research and contribute to the public good. To answer this question the paper describes five detailed qualitative case studies of research projects including CSOs. The paper finds that transformative impact of CSO integration is possible but by no means assured. It provides recommendations on how transformative impact can be promoted.

Redefining neuromarketing as an integrated science of influence

Multiple transformative forces target marketing, many of which derive from new technologies that allow us to sample thinking in real time (i.e., brain imaging), or to look at large aggregations of decisions (i.e., big data). There has been an inclination to refer to the intersection of these technologies with the general topic of marketing as "neuromarketing". There has not been a serious effort to frame neuromarketing, which is the goal of this paper. Neuromarketing can be compared to neuroeconomics, wherein neuroeconomics is generally focused on how individuals make "choices", and represent distributions of choices. Neuromarketing, in contrast, focuses on how a distribution of choices can be shifted or "influenced", which can occur at multiple "scales" of behavior (e.g., individual, group, or market/society). Given influence can affect choice through many cognitive modalities, and not just that of valuation of choice options, a science of influence also implies a need to develop a model of cognitive function integrating attention, memory, and reward/aversion function. The paper concludes with a brief description of three domains of neuromarketing application for studying influence, and their caveats.

Conflicts of interest in psychiatry: strategies to cultivate literacy in daily practice

The relationship between psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies has come under scrutiny during the past decade. Concerns are growing that financial ties of psychiatrists to the pharmaceutical industry may unduly influence professional judgments involving the primary interests of patients. Such conflicts of interest threaten the public trust in psychiatry. The goal of conflict of interest policies is to protect the integrity of professional judgment and to preserve public trust. The disclosure of individual and institutional financial relationships is a critical but limited first step in the process of identifying and responding to conflicts of interest. Conflict of interest policies and procedures can be strengthened by engaged psychiatrists, researchers, institutions, and professional associations in developing policies and consensus standards. Research on conflicts of interest can provide a stronger evidence base for policy design and implementation. Society has traditionally granted the medical profession considerable autonomy and may be willing to continue do so in the case of conflicts of interest. Nevertheless, concern is growing that stronger measures are needed. To avoid undue regulatory burdens, psychiatrists can play a vital role in designing responsible and reasonable conflict of interest policies that reduce the risks of bias and the loss of trust. Psychiatrists and the institutions that carry out research, education, clinical care, and practice guideline development must recognize public concerns about conflicts of interest and take effective measures soon to maintain public trust with a cultural change in the practice of psychiatry, from reactive treatment-seeking for mental illness to proactive advocacy for patients.

Interdisciplinary benefits of a theory of cultural evolution centered at the group-level: the emergence of macro-neuroeconomics and social evolutionary game theory

The theoretical concepts developed in the target article, in which the author proposes a new paradigm of cultural evolution based not on the individuals' characteristics, but rather on more global collective properties described as "group-traits" (which emerge when a group of individuals exhibit both differentiation and organization), may have a broader scientific impact that transcend the boundaries of social and evolutionary psychology, paving the way for the emergence of macro-neuroeconomics and social evolutionary game theory.

[Non-medical applications for brain MRI: Ethical considerations]

INTRODUCTION

The recent neuroimaging techniques offer the possibility to better understand complex cognitive processes that are involved in mental disorders and thus have become cornerstone tools for research in psychiatry. The performances of functional magnetic resonance imaging are not limited to medical research and are used in non-medical fields. These recent applications represent new challenges for bioethics.

OBJECTIVE

In this article we aim at discussing the new ethical issues raised by the applications of the latest neuroimaging technologies to non-medical fields.

METHODS

We included a selection of peer-reviewed English medical articles after a search on NCBI Pubmed database and Google scholar from 2000 to 2013. We screened bibliographical tables for supplementary references. Websites of governmental French institutions implicated in ethical questions were also screened for governmental reports.

RESULTS

Findings of brain areas supporting emotional responses and regulation have been used for marketing research, also called neuromarketing. The discovery of different brain activation patterns in antisocial disorder has led to changes in forensic psychiatry with the use of imaging techniques with unproven validity. Automated classification algorithms and multivariate statistical analyses of brain images have been applied to brain-reading techniques, aiming at predicting unconscious neural processes in humans. We finally report the current position of the French legislation recently revised and discuss the technical limits of such techniques.

DISCUSSION

In the near future, brain imaging could find clinical applications in psychiatry as diagnostic or predictive tools. However, the latest advances in brain imaging are also used in non-scientific fields raising key ethical questions. Involvement of neuroscientists, psychiatrists, physicians but also of citizens in neuroethics discussions is crucial to challenge the risk of unregulated uses of brain imaging.

The state of the art in organizational cognitive neuroscience: the therapeutic gap and possible implications for clinical practice

In the last decade, researchers in the social sciences have increasingly adopted neuroscientific techniques, with the consequent rise of research inspired by neuroscience in disciplines such as economics, marketing, decision sciences, and leadership. In 2007, we introduced the term organizational cognitive neuroscience (OCN), in an attempt to clearly demarcate research carried out in these many areas, and provide an overarching paradigm for research utilizing cognitive neuroscientific methods, theories, and concepts, within the organizational and business research fields. Here we will revisit and further refine the OCN paradigm, and define an approach where we feel the marriage of organizational theory and neuroscience will return even greater dividends in the future and that is within the field of clinical practice.

Neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience: contributions to neurology

BACKGROUND

'Neuromarketing' is a term that has often been used in the media in recent years. These public discussions have generally centered around potential ethical aspects and the public fear of negative consequences for society in general, and consumers in particular. However, positive contributions to the scientific discourse from developing a biological model that tries to explain context-situated human behavior such as consumption have often been neglected. We argue for a differentiated terminology, naming commercial applications of neuroscientific methods 'neuromarketing' and scientific ones 'consumer neuroscience'. While marketing scholars have eagerly integrated neuroscientific evidence into their theoretical framework, neurology has only recently started to draw its attention to the results of consumer neuroscience.

DISCUSSION

In this paper we address key research topics of consumer neuroscience that we think are of interest for neurologists; namely the reward system, trust and ethical issues. We argue that there are overlapping research topics in neurology and consumer neuroscience where both sides can profit from collaboration. Further, neurologists joining the public discussion of ethical issues surrounding neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience could contribute standards and experience gained in clinical research.

SUMMARY

We identify the following areas where consumer neuroscience could contribute to the field of neurology:First, studies using game paradigms could help to gain further insights into the underlying pathophysiology of pathological gambling in Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal dementia, epilepsy, and Huntington's disease.Second, we identify compulsive buying as a common interest in neurology and consumer neuroscience. Paradigms commonly used in consumer neuroscience could be applied to patients suffering from Parkinson's disease and frontotemporal dementia to advance knowledge of this important behavioral symptom.Third, trust research in the medical context lacks empirical behavioral and neuroscientific evidence. Neurologists entering this field of research could profit from the extensive knowledge of the biological foundation of trust that scientists in economically-orientated neurosciences have gained.Fourth, neurologists could contribute significantly to the ethical debate about invasive methods in neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience. Further, neurologists should investigate biological and behavioral reactions of neurological patients to marketing and advertising measures, as they could show special consumer vulnerability and be subject to target marketing.

The Puzzle of Neuroimaging and Psychiatric Diagnosis: Technology and Nosology in an Evolving Discipline

Brain imaging provides ever more sensitive measures of structure and function relevant to human psychology and has revealed correlates for virtually every psychiatric disorder. Yet it plays no accepted role in psychiatric diagnosis beyond ruling out medical factors such as tumors or traumatic brain injuries. Why is brain imaging not used in the diagnosis of primary psychiatric disorders, such as depression, bipolar disease, schizophrenia, and ADHD? The present article addresses this question. It reviews the state of the art in psychiatric imaging, including diagnostic and other applications, and explains the nonutility of diagnostic imaging in terms of aspects of both the current state of imaging and the current nature of psychiatric nosology. The likely future path by which imaging-based diagnoses will be incorporated into psychiatry is also discussed. By reviewing one well-known attempt to use SPECT-scanning in psychiatric diagnosis, the article examines a real-world practice that illustrates several related points: the appeal of the idea of image-assisted diagnosis for physicians, patients and families, despite a lack of proven effectiveness, and the mismatch between the categories and dimensions of current nosology and those suggested by imaging.

Brain computer interfaces, a review

A brain-computer interface (BCI) is a hardware and software communications system that permits cerebral activity alone to control computers or external devices. The immediate goal of BCI research is to provide communications capabilities to severely disabled people who are totally paralyzed or 'locked in' by neurological neuromuscular disorders, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, brain stem stroke, or spinal cord injury. Here, we review the state-of-the-art of BCIs, looking at the different steps that form a standard BCI: signal acquisition, preprocessing or signal enhancement, feature extraction, classification and the control interface. We discuss their advantages, drawbacks, and latest advances, and we survey the numerous technologies reported in the scientific literature to design each step of a BCI. First, the review examines the neuroimaging modalities used in the signal acquisition step, each of which monitors a different functional brain activity such as electrical, magnetic or metabolic activity. Second, the review discusses different electrophysiological control signals that determine user intentions, which can be detected in brain activity. Third, the review includes some techniques used in the signal enhancement step to deal with the artifacts in the control signals and improve the performance. Fourth, the review studies some mathematic algorithms used in the feature extraction and classification steps which translate the information in the control signals into commands that operate a computer or other device. Finally, the review provides an overview of various BCI applications that control a range of devices.