UNDERSTANDING CEREBRAL ACTIVATIONS IN

NEUROMARKETING

A Neuroelectrical Perspective

Giovanni Vecchiato

1,2

, Laura Astolfi

2,3

, Fabrizio De Vico Fallani

1,2

, Jlenia Toppi

2,3

, Fabio Aloise

Febo Cincotti

, Donatella Mattia

and Fabio Babiloni

1,2

Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, University “Sapienza”, Rome, Italy

IRCCS "Fondazione Santa Lucia", Rome, Italy

Department of Computer Science and Systems, University “Sapienza”, Rome, Italy

Keywords: Neuromarketing, MEG, High Resolution EEG, SSVEP, Functional connectivity.

Abstract: This paper aims to be a survey of recent experiments performed in the Neuromarketing field. Our purpose is

to illustrate results obtained by employing the popular tools of investigation well known in the international

neuroelectrical community such as the MEG, High Resolution EEG techniques and steady-state visually

evoked potentials. By means of temporal and frequency patterns of cortical activations we intend to show

how the neuroscientific community is nowadays sensible to the needs of companies and, at the same time,

how the same tools are able to retrieve hidden information about the demands of consumers. These

instruments could be of help both in pre- and post-design stage of a product, or a service, that a marketer is

going to promote.

1 INTRODUCTION

For a long time in the neuroscience the experimental

psychology has been the main method to investigate

the human being. In that field, they measure the

execution time of the experimental subject as well as

his/her reaction time to particular stimuli. In

particular, the subject can answer, move the finger,

do free mental associations and the experimenter

will measure some variables correlated with the

internal processes of the subject. Of course, the

access to the internal state of the subject is restricted,

since it is observed by means of his/her behavioural

answers. The experimental context plays an

important role in these kind of experiments, since

the subjects are required to answer in a short time in

order to cause errors. The measure of the amount

and frequency of such errors is important as an

indirect measure of the internal processes of the

subject. These behavioural techniques can be applied

with a low cost to a large amount of people. The

brain imaging techniques have the capability to

show images of the cerebral activity during the

execution of a particular experimental task. The

most popular method is the functional Magnetic

Resonance Image (fMRI), which returns a sequence

of images of the cerebral activity by means of the

measure of the cerebral blood flow. Although such

as images are “static”, i.e. they are related to around

ten seconds activity, they have a high special

resolution that no other neuroimaging method can

offer. Nowadays, fMRI scanners are employed in the

neuromarketing field and in literature there exists

some scientific studies showing the activation of

particular cerebral areas during the tasting of a

couple of popular drinks such as Coca-Cola and

Pepsi (Mc Clure et al., 2004). It must be noted that

the design of the fMRI studies rely on highlighting

cortical areas which differ between the experimental

task and the control one. The issue is connected with

the data interpretation which can be given by the

activation of particular cerebral areas during the

experimental task proposed. In order to solve this

problem there is the need to generate a proper

experimental design in order to remove these kind of

confounding factors. As stated above, the brain

imaging allows us to observe cerebral areas

activating during a particular task but it does not

explain why, neither in which way the information is

Vecchiato G., Astolﬁ L., De Vico Fallani F., Toppi J., Aloise F., Cincotti F., Mattia D. and Babiloni F..

UNDERSTANDING CEREBRAL ACTIVATIONS IN NEUROMARKETING - A Neuroelectrical Perspective.

DOI: 10.5220/0003354900910097

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing (BIOSIGNALS-2011), pages 91-97

ISBN: 978-989-8425-35-5

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

processed within the experimental subject. In this

way we are not accessing the cerebral answer of the

subject by his/her behave but directly by means of

the activity of his/her neurons. The role of the brain

imaging in the neuromarketing field is to refine, on

the basis of a selected sample of people, some

theories and hypotheses the neuropsychological

research draw from the same experimentation on a

larger number of subjects.

In the following paragraphs we intend to give a

survey about the neuromarketing research performed

in the neuroelectrical community. Our purpose is to

show the results obtained by different group of

research, their congruence and similarity leading

towards a shared model which is able to extract

information about the memorization and the

pleasantness perceive by subjects while watching

TV advertisements. In particular, this paper will

focus on the results achieved by employing the

magnetoencephalography (MEG) and

electroencephalography (EEG) technique along with

a discussion about patterns of cortical functional

connectivity and indexes derived from the graph

theory.

Finally, we describe the experimental findings

obtained by a steady-state visually evoked potential

analysis.

2 TEMPORAL PATTERNS

OF CORTICAL ACTIVITY

In this context, the research team of Sven

Braeutigam (Braeutigam et al., 2005, 2004, 2001)

has employed the MEG in order to study the

temporal relationship of cerebral areas involved in

consumers’ choices when they have to make

decisions among different items within a laboratory.

In this study they wanted to analyse the cerebral

behaviour by distinguishing male subjects from

females during a simulated shopping.

Cerebral activations induced by choices to make

reflect the level of familiarity or the preference that a

particular experimental subject has with the

presented products. These factors can be considered

by taking into account the relationship between the

current choice of a product on the shelf and the

relative frequency of choice and usage of that

product in the past.

In particular, the main observation came to light

from these studies presents the consumer’s choice

like a complex sequence of cerebral activations that

greatly differ according to the consumer’s sex and to

the probability of choice. From a behavioural point

of view, choices with a high probability were faster

than those less predictable. This can be interpreted

by supposing that in the case of more difficult

choices the cortical activities are more complex than

those simple to make. As illustrated in figure 1, they

distinguished two distinct cerebral paths. The first

Figure 1: Cortical activations associated to the decisions of an experimental subject. Predictable choices are the ones related

to familiar items which has been often bought or used in the past. Cortical maps present the brain areas activated during the

different decision stages in the frequency range of [30, 40] Hz. Modified with permission from Braeutigam et al., 2003.

BIOSIGNALS 2011 - International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing

one is referred to predictable choices, i.e. associated

to products that the experimental subject already

used in the past or said to prefer; the second one is

related to unpredictable choices, i.e. associated to

unfamiliar products to the subject. In the experiment,

a first stage in the decisional process has been

individuated around 100 ms after the stimulus onset

with an activity located in the occipital cortex. At

this stage of decision (W) the subject compare the

product to choose with the list of products seen

before, by involving the working memory.

The sequence of cortical activations observed in

the experimental subjects continues with two

neuronal stages partially correlated (M, S) which can

be observed between 280 and 400 ms after the

beginning of the decisional process. In this period

the selective attention of the subject is oriented

towards images of products to identify, classify and

compare with those stored in the memory related to

the preferred products and brands. This memory can

involve the past experience to have bought the

particular item or to have watched the commercial of

the specific brand. The cerebral activation differs in

this time interval between men and women. In

particular, female subjects showed a stronger

activation with respect to the males in the left

parieto-occipital lobule of the brain while males

presented a stronger cortical activity in the right

temporal lobe. These differences connected with the

sex of the subjects characterize both the stage of

choice of the product and its discrimination. This

observation suggest that, at this temporal stage,

women tend to employ a strategy based on the

knowledge of the product to buy, while men tend to

act according to a spatial memory strategy (Kimura,

1996).

After 500 ms from the beginning of the

decisional process, two patterns of cortical

activations can be identified according to the

predictability of the choices adopted by the subjects.

In particular, as to the predictable choices, we can

observe a strong activation in the right parietal areas

around 900 ms after the beginning of the experiment

(I). In later time latencies, predictable choices of

products recall strong MEG oscillations in the

frequency band between [30, 40] Hz in the left

prefrontal cortex (B). Parietal cortex receive inputs

from many cortical areas since it is involved in the

spatial integration of sensorial information.

Differences in the cortical activity between men and

women can strengthen the hypothesis of two

different groups of strategies. On the contrary,

unpredictable choices generate a strong activation in

the right inferior frontal cortex (V), at a latency of

around 500 ms, and in the left orbitofrontal cortex

(J) between 600 and 1200 ms after the stimulus

presentation. In the case V, the cortical patterns are

consistent with the activity in the Broca’s area,

which is involved in the spoken language, which is

also active during the observation of videoclips.

Hence, the cortical activity at this latency may

indicate a tendency to vocalize brands, as a part of

strategy which helps in the decision when it is

difficult. The activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (J)

can be explained by stating that during an

unpredictable choice we have to evaluate the

outcome in terms of convenience. Overall, these

results explain a complex neuronal network which is

active during a simple decisional process connected

to the purchase of a product. The generation of a

choice is considered as an information processing

which can be highly influenced, sensible to the

complexity of the decision to make and to the rush

in which the decision is made and many other

factors.

A strong involvement of parietal areas during the

observation of the TV commercials with an affective

and cognitive content was also noted in a previous

study, performed by using sophisticated MEG

recordings (Ioannides et al., 2000). In this study,

cognitive frames elicited a stronger activity in the

parietal areas and superior prefrontal cortex while

the observation of the affective ones is correlated

with the activation of the orbitofrontal and

retrosplenial cortex, amygdala and brainstem. The

magneto field tomography (MFT) results showed an

increasing activity during the observation of

cognitive stimuli rather than affective commercials

in parietal and superior prefrontal areas known to be

associated with executive control of working

memory and maintenance of highly processed

representation of complex stimuli (Summerfield et

al., 2005). Although the affect related activations are

more variable across subjects, these findings are

consistent with previous PET and fMRI studies

(Cahill et al., 1996; Maddock 1999; Grabenhorst et

al., 2008) showing that stimuli with affective content

modulates activity in the orbitofrontal and

retrosplenial cortex, amygdala and brainstem.

3 FREQUENCY PATTERNS OF

CORTICAL ACTIVITY AND

FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVITY

The research in the neuromarketing field performed

in the recent years showed result suggesting that the

cortical activity elicited during the observation of the

UNDERSTANDING CEREBRAL ACTIVATIONS IN NEUROMARKETING - A Neuroelectrical Perspective

TV commercials that were forgotten (FRG) is

different from the cortical activity observed in

subjects that remembered the same TV commercials

(RMB). In fact, the principal areas of statistical

differences in power spectra between such

conditions are located almost bilaterally in the

prefrontal Broadmann Areas (BAs) 8, 9 as well as in

the parietal BAs 7, as showns in figure 2. The

spectral amplitude in the RMB condition was always

higher than the power spectra in the FRG conditions

over the BAs 8, 9 and 7 (Astolfi et al., 2008). A

statistical increase of EEG spectral power in the

prefrontal and parietal areas for the RMB dataset

compared with the FRG one is in agreement with the

suggested role of these regions during the transfer of

sensory percepts from short-term memory to long-

term memory storage. Although in this study the

differences in the cortical power spectra between the

RMB and FRG conditions are relatively insensitive

to the particular frequency bands considered, there

are experimental evidences showing that there is a

stronger engagement of the left frontal areas in all

the subjects analyzed during the observation of the

TV commercials that were remembered (Vecchiato

et al., 2010).

In particular, the analysis of the statistical

cortical maps in the condition RMB vs FRG

suggested that the left frontal hemisphere was highly

active during the RMB condition, especially in the

theta and gamma band. These results are in

agreement with different observations on the RMB

condition performed in literature by studying

different experimental paradigm (Summerfield et al.,

2005; Werkle-Bergner et al., 2006). Taken together,

the results indicated the cortical activity in the theta

band on the left frontal areas was increased during

the memorization of commercials, and it is also

increased during the observation of commercials that

were judged pleasant by subjects. These results are

in agreement with the role that has been advocated

for the left pre and frontal regions during the transfer

of sensory percepts from the short-term memory

toward the long-term memory storage by the HERA

model (Tulving et al., 1994; Habib et al., 2003). In

fact, in such model the left hemisphere plays a key

role during the encoding phase of information from

the short term memory to the long term memory,

whereas the right hemisphere plays a role in the

retrieval of such information.

It must be noted, however, that the role of the

right cortices in storing images has been also

recognized for many years in neuroscience

(Braeutigam et al., 2005, 2004; Babiloni et al., 2000;

Astolfi et al., 2009, 2008). It is worthy of note that

the subjects were unaware of the kind of questions

that the researcher asked them after the viewing of

the documentary. Hence, the cortical areas elicited

by this study are likely to be involved just in the

process of the memorization of the pictorial

material, owing to an increase of attention during the

observation of the TV commercial. In addition, there

was no particular set of commercials remembered

that was common to all the subjects.

Figure 2: Figure presents the results of statistical comparisons of RMB and FRG groups in the theta and alpha frequency

ranges (panel A), and in the beta and gamma bands (panel B). In particular, the picture is composed by three rows: the first

one shows the brain from a frontal perspective, the second one is related to a medial- sagittal perspective while the third one

presents statistically significant images associated to the left and right lateral vision. Modified with permission from Astolfi

et al., 2008.

BIOSIGNALS 2011 - International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing

The results also suggest an active involvement of

the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) and the

Cingulate Motor Area (CMA) as sources of links to

all the other cortical areas during the observation of

the TV commercials remembered after ten days. In

this case the increased activity related to an increase

of the outflow of PDC links from ACC and CMA

towards other cortical regions could be taken as a

sign of increased ‘emotive’ attention to the stories

proposed by different TV commercials that

significantly aid successive memorization.

The EEG spectral and cortical network analyses

performed in these study also suggest a key role of

the parietal areas as targets of the incoming

information flow from all the other cortical areas.

Functional networks in the frequency domain were

also estimated by evaluating the global- and local-

efficiency indexes derived from the graph theory,

employed as a measure of the level of

communication in the networks (De Vico Fallani et

al., 2008). The changes of these indexes could be

related both to memory coding activity as well as to

increase/decrease of attentive state of the subjects.

As to the RMB condition, the functional network in

the beta and gamma band state a significant non-

homogeneous allocation of the involved information

flows and a consequent reduction of the efficiency in

the overall communication between the network

nodes. In the beta and gamma frequency bands, the

respective reduction of global-efficiency, as well as

the reduction of local-efficiency for the alpha band

of the cortical network communication could

represent a predictive measure for the accurate recall

of the commercials that will be remembered.

A contrast of the activity elicited by observing

pleasant (LIKE dataset) and unpleasant (DISLIKE

dataset) audiovisual content has been performed in a

previous study (Vecchiato et al., 2010). The result of

this experiment shows that the activity of the brain is

greater in the LIKE condition than in the DISLIKE

except that in beta band, being the activity in the

LIKE condition for the gamma band rather

symmetrical. The results here obtained for the LIKE

condition are also congruent with other observations

performed with EEG in a group of 20 subjects

during the observation of pictures from the

International Affective Picture System (IAPS,

Aftnas et al., 2004). Such observations indicated an

increase of the EEG activity in the theta band for the

anterior areas of the left hemisphere.

4 STEADY-STATE VISUALLY

EVOKED POTENTIALS

These results are also supported by findings obtained

from the group of Richard Silberstein which

measured the steady-state visually evoked potential

(SSVEP) by means of the steady-state probe

topography (SSPT), which is a particular version of

Figure 3: Figure presents four cortical z-score maps, in the four frequency bands employed. Colour bar represents cortical

areas in which increased statistically significant activity occurs in the RMB group when compared to the FRG group in red,

while blue is used otherwise (p < 0,05 Bonferroni corrected). Grey colour is used to map cortical areas where there are no

significant differences between the cortical activity in the RMB and FRG groups (panel A). Panel B refers to the statistical

comparison LIKE vs DISLIKE with the same conventions of panel A. Modified with permission from Vecchiato et al.,

2010.

UNDERSTANDING CEREBRAL ACTIVATIONS IN NEUROMARKETING - A Neuroelectrical Perspective

the EEG technology (Silberstein et al., 1990, 2000;

Silberstein, 1995). In this study (Silberstein et al.,

2000), they collected the cerebral activity from thirty

five women that were subjected to the exposition of

eighteen minutes documentary in which 12 US TV

commercials were inserted within. Seven days after

the recording, the participants were asked to recall

the viewed advertisements from a series of frames

taken from the same commercials. They found out

that images corresponding to a minima of the

posterior frontal latency were more likely to be

recognized than images associated to a SSVEP

latency maxima. Moreover, they showed a

significant correlation between the recognition

performance and SSVEP latency measured at

electrode sites located in the left posterior frontal

site suggesting that this kind of result can be

employed in order to asses the strength of long-term

memory encoding for the audiovisual stimuli they

proposed.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In recent years, Neuromarketing has gained always

more interest and attention in both the scientific

community and mass media. Findings obtained so

far show that results from these studies can be of

help for many areas of marketing. For instance,

marketers could exploit neuroimaging tools in order

to achieve hidden information about products and

services to advertise that is impossible to acquire.

This information could be employed both during the

design process of an item and during its commercial

campaign. In fact, one could think to adopt these

neuroelectrical tools to test different versions of the

same object, evaluate the cerebral results and use

them according to the requirements of the company

and at the same time facing with the consumers’

need. In addition, marketers could use an ad pre-test

in order to create a TV commercial which is as

closer as possible to the demand of the same. In this

case we can distinguish two different point of view

of the powerful and innovative tool: from one hand,

product manufacturers could use cerebral

information in order to force people to buy and

consume products that they don’t want and neither

need; from the other hand, we hope that

neuromarketing will be of help in design objects and

the environment following the pleasures of each of

us and for identifying new and exciting products that

people want and find useful.

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