The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind (47 page)

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Authors: A. K. Pradeep

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Cooper,
Identical Twins and Food Cravings
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982).

To learn more about dogs and their amazing ability to smell, see Hywell Williams and Andres Pembroke, “Sniffer Dogs in the Melanoma Clinic,”
The
Lancet
(April 1, 1989).

Chapter 6

For the latest statistics on Alzheimer’s, see “Alzheimer’s Disease,”
New York
Times
, Thursday, February 4, 2010.

For a discussion on the positive aspects of the aging brain, see Roberto Cabeze et al., “Aging Gracefully: Compensatory Brain Activity in High-Performing Older Adults,”
NeuroImage
17 (2002): 1394–1402.

Gaolang Gong et al., “Age- and Gender-Related Differences in the Cortical Anatomical Network,”
The Journal of Neuroscience
29, no. 50 (2009): 15684–15693.

Dixon Gunning et al. “Age-Related Differences in Brain Activation during Emotional Face Processing,”
Neurobiology of Aging
24 (2003): 285–295.

Elizabeth Kensinger and Daniel Schacter, “Young and Old Brains Differ in Encoding Positive Information.” http://mitpress.org/cgi/content/20/

7/1161.

—.
Neural Processes Supporting Younger and Older Adults’ Emotional Memories
.

(Boston: MIT Press, 2008).

M. Mather et al., “Amygdala Responses to Emotionally Valenced Differences in Brain Activation during Emotional Face Processing.”
Psychology Science
15 (2004): 259–263.

Sara Reisand-Long, “Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain.”
New York
Times
, May 20, 2008.

Patricia A. Reuter, and Cindy Lustig, “Brain Aging: Reorganizing Discoveries about the Aging Mind.”
Current Opinion in Neurobiology
15 (2005): 245–251.

Barbara Staunch, “How to Train the Aging Brain,”
New York Times
, December 29, 2009.

Williams et al., “The Mellow Years? Neural Basis of Improving Emotional Stability over Age,”
The Journal of Neuroscience
26, no. 24 ( June 14, 2006): 6422–6430.

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Notes and Sources

Chapter 7

For a definitive overview of the female brain, see Louann Brizendine,
The
Female Brain
(New York: Broadway Times, 2006).

For details on the female brain in the modern workplace, see Helen Fisher,
The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the
World
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1999).

To see how maternity enhances the female brain, see Katherine Ellison,
The
Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter.
(New York: Basic Books, 2005).

For a more thorough discussion of self-esteem in girls, see Robert Josephs, et al., “Gender and Self-Esteem,”
Journal of Perspectives of Social Psychology
63, no. 3 (1993): 391–402.

For the economic clout of women, see Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre,

“The Female Economy,”
Harvard Business Review
(September, 2009), 46–53; Marissa Miley and Ann Mack, “The Rise of the Real Mom,”
Advertising Age
, White Paper (November 16, 2009).

For a discussion on speaking styles of both genders, see Deborah Tannen,
You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversations
. (New York: William Morrow, 1990).

For an insider’s view of a woman’s brain, see Jill Bolte Taylor,
My Stroke of
Insight
. (New York: Penguin Books, 2006).

Chapter 8

For a great overview of recent research findings on the maternal brain, read: Katherine Ellison,
The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter
. (New York: Basic Books, 2005).

For a sociological perspective on modern motherhood, see Sarah Hrdy,
Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Brain
. (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999).

Groundbreaking research into the changes that occur with motherhood are presented in Craig H. Kinsley and Kelly Lambert, “The Maternal Brain,”

Scientific American
294, no. 11 ( January 2006): 72–79.

The details on sleep loss are from James B. Maas,
Power Sleep: The Revolutionary Program that Prepares Your Mind for Peak Performance
. (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998).

Michael Merzenich and I had a long conversation about the plasticity of the maternal brain.

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241

For brain changes in the maternal brain, see Michael Numan and Thomas Insel,
The Neurobiology of Parental Behavior
. (New York: Springer, 2003).

To learn more about the creation of new neurons in the “Mommy Brain,”

see T. Shingo et al., “Pregnancy-Stimulated Neurogenesis in the Adult Female Forebrain Mediated by Prolactin,”
Science
299 ( January 3, 2003): 5003.

For more about the changes maternity presents to the brain, see C. Xerri et al., “Alterations of the Cortical Representation of the Rat Ventrum Induced by Nursing Behavior,”
Journal of Neuroscience
14, no. 3 (March 1994).

Chapter 9

The two definitive sources for groundbreaking material on Mirror Neurons are:

Marco Iacoboni,
Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with
Others
. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008).

Giacomo Rizzolatti and Laura Craighero “The Mirror Neuron System,”
Annual Review of Neuroscience
27 ( June 2004): 169–192.

Chapter 10

Metrics and measures described in this chapter have been developed by NeuroFocus based on a wealth of academic research that has been adapted and tested to meet the unique needs of our commercial and consumer research clients.

Examples of the foundational research we have leveraged can be found in the following seminal studies and literature reviews.

On attention: Jin Fan, Michael I. Posner et al., “The Relation of Brain Oscillations to Attentional Networks,”
The Journal of Neuroscience
27, no. 23

( June 6, 2007), 6197– 6206.

On emotional engagement: James A. Coan and John J.B. Allen, “Frontal EEG Asymmetry as a Moderator and Mediator of Emotion,”
Biological Psychology
67 (2004): 7–49.

On memory: Wolfgang Klimesch, “EEG Alpha and Theta Oscillations Reflect Cognitive and Memory Performance: A Review and Analysis,”
Brain
Research Reviews
29 (1999): 169–195.

On persuasion: John Cacioppo and Richard Petty, “The Elaboration Likelihood Model: The Role of Affect and Affect-Laden Information Processing in Persuasion,” in Patricia Cafferata and Alice Tybout, Editors,
Cognitive and
Affective Responses to Advertising
. (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989).

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On novelty: Robert T. Knight, “Contribution of Human Hippocampal Region to Novelty Detection,”
Nature
383, no. 19 (September 1996): 256259.

On awareness, understanding, and comprehension: Sabine Weiss and Horst Mueller, “The Contribution of EEG Coherence to the Investigation of Language,”
Brain and Language
85 (2003): 325–343.

Chapter 11

The Consumer Journey is a proprietary framework developed by NeuroFocus to integrate neuroscience metrics with the full spectrum of consumer responses to brands, product selection, advertising, in-store shopping, product usage, and post-purchase behavior.

Chapter 12

The Brand Essence Framework is a proprietary tool developed by NeuroFocus to delineate the major dimensions or elements of brands in the marketplace.

A large and fascinating literature exists on the topic of brands and the brain. Some classic studies that explore this relationship include Tim Ambler et al., “Brands on the Brain: Neuro-Images of Advertising,”
Business Strategy
Review
11, no. 3 (2000): 17–30); Samuel McClure et al., “Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference for Culturally Familiar Drinks,”
Neuron
44 (October 14, 2004): 379–387; Chris Janiszewski, “Preattentive Mere Exposure Effects,”

Journal of Consumer Research
20, no. 3 (December 1993); ABI/INFORM

Global, p. 376); Michael Schaefer and Michael Rotte, “Favorite Brands as Cultural Objects Modulate Reward Circuit,”
Brain Imaging
18, no. 2

( January 22, 2007); and Hilke Plassmann et al., “What Can Advertisers Learn from Neuroscience?”
International Journal of Advertising
26, no. 2) (2007): 151–175.

Chapter 13

The Total Consumer Experience methodology is a proprietary tool developed by NeuroFocus to compare and combine sensory product experiences using direct neurological measures rather than, or in addition to, articulated responses. Here are some examples of foundational research using brain imaging to measure sensory experiences:

For taste, J. O’Doherty et al., “Representation of Pleasant and Aversive Taste in the Human Brain,”
The Journal of Neurophysiology
85, no. 3 (March 2001): 1315–1321.

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For olfaction (smell), Tyler S. Lorig, “The Application of Electroencephalographic Techniques to the Study of Human Olfaction: A Review and Tutorial,”
International Journal of Psychophysiology
36 (2000): 91–104.

For audition (sound, music), Eckart Altenm üller, “Hits to the Left, Flops to the Right: Different Emotions during Listening to Music Are Reflected in Cortical Lateralisation Patterns,”
Neuropsychologia
40 (2002): 2242–2256; also Margaret M. Bradley and Peter J. Lang, “Affective Reactions to Acoustic Stimuli,”
Psychophysiology
37 (2000): 204–215.

The New Product Effectiveness Framework is a proprietary tool developed by NeuroFocus to assess neurological responses to new product concepts expressed in words. The methodology is based on a rich literature on cognitive and emotional response to words in written and spoken form. Some of the foundational research in this area is summarized in Marta Kutas and Kara D.

Federmeier, “Electrophysiology Reveals Semantic Memory Use in Language Comprehension,”
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
4 no. 12 (December 2000). Many techniques have been adapted from studies of language disabilities; see, for example, Dennis L. Molfese et al., “The Use of Brain Electrophysiology Techniques to Study Language,”
Learning Disability Quarterly
24 (Summer 2001).

A key neuroscience tool for assessing new products and novel concepts is a cognitive response called the “expectancy violation” reaction. This is an automatic process by which the brain “resets” its expectations when it encounters an item in a flow of experience that does not “fit” with the rest of the flow. An example of this phenomenon and how it can be used to measure pricing sensitivities is William J. Gehring and Adrian R. Willoughby,

“The Medial Frontal Cortex and the Rapid Processing of Monetary Gains and Losses,”
Science
295, no. 22 (March 2002).

Chapter 14

The Packaging Effectiveness Framework is a proprietary tool developed by NeuroFocus to measure the impact and effectiveness of different packaging treatments. The notion of “pop-out” is central to packaging assessment. Pop-out is referred to as “bottom-up attention” in the neuroscience literature and has been the subject of thousands of studies. The path-breaking work in this area was carried out by Anne Treisman and colleagues in the 1980s and 1990s.

An accessible introduction can be found in Michael S. Ambinder and Daniel J. Simons, “Attention Capture: The Interplay of Expectations, Attention, and Awareness,” Chapter 12 in Laurent Itti et al., editors,
Neurobiology of Attention
.

(Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 2005).

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Chapter 15

“The brain dislikes straight lines and sharp edges . . .” See Moshe Bar and Maital Neta, “Humans Prefer Curved Visual Objects,”
Psychological Science
17, no. 8 (2006): 645–648.

The Shopper Experience Framework is a proprietary tool developed by NeuroFocus to test neurological responses to shopping and point of sale environments. Observations throughout this chapter about subconscious responses to different dimensions of the shopping experience are drawn from NeuroFocus client studies undertaken in both real and virtual shopping environments.

Chapter 16

The Advertising Effectiveness Framework is a proprietary tool developed by NeuroFocus to assess brain responses to advertising messages. Observations throughout the chapter on the impacts of motion, novelty, error, and ambiguity on advertising effectiveness are derived from hundreds of advertising analyses performed for NeuroFocus clients. For readers interested in the neuroscience and cognitive psychology underlying these findings, here are some good starting points.

For the attentional attraction of motion, see Charles L. Folk and Roger W.

Remington, “The Structure of Attentional Control: Contingent Attentional Capture by Apparent Motion, Abrupt Onset, and Color,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
20, no. 2: (April 1994: 317–329). See also Steven L. Franconeri and Daniel J. Simons, “Moving and Looming Stimuli Capture Attention,”
Perception & Psychophysics
65, no. 7

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