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3 Interview with Richard Silberstein`

So Richard what is, can we talk a bitabout your background and how do you,
how did you come to neuromarketing andconsumer neuroscience? >> I think I
came to this fieldby a rather strange route. My, my original background is
physics. >> Hm. >> With actually an interestin theoretical physics. >> Hm.>> I
only took to the honors degree at Monash University here in Melbourne. And
my, my Ph.D was in neuroscience. Then called neurophysiology. >> Mm-hm. >>
And I was actually involvedin mapping electric fields. In this case,in the spinal
cord of the toad. We have a Queensland cane toadwhich originally comes from
South America, I think. It's very big and I was recording thepotent, the
extracellular potentials in the spinal cord of the toad andthat was the basis of
my PhD thesis. I then I did some teaching at MelbourneUniversity and then I
was appointed at Swinburne University in, in Melbourne,to establish a medical
biophysics course. Which combined my two interests, which arebiomedical
engineering, if you will and, and instrumentation andsignal processing with
medical physiology. And so that was wherethe teaching side came in, but. I
was always interested in applyingtechnology, signal processing, so EEG,
signal processing, was always my,my predominant area of interest. And it, one
of the things that I gotinterested a long time ago is the brain response to
sinusoidal visual stimuli inother words ongoing oscillatory stimuli. >> Hm. >>
Causes a response in many areas of thebrain, which is a sinusoidal response
and it, it I had this feelinga long time ago that there was useful information
aboutunderlying cognitive processes. >> Hm. >> And I was stimulated to think
thatway because one of the authors in, who was an authority in this area, a
chapcalled I think it was Michael Regan. >> Hm.>> Who published some of the
key books on the steady-statepotential, said in his earlier book, you cannot use
the steady-statepotential to study cognition. >> Hm.>> And I thought no I
don't,I don't think that's correct. And I'm.So I'd gotten interested and to be
frank I sort of been pursuing my,my interests, so mainly use the technology
that, that we developed which werefer to as steady-state topography. Which is,
essentially, looking at, the amplitude changes of a time indifferent parts of the
brain and in response to a visual flicker, whichis presented to the peripheral
retina. In other words, centrally you canactually look at a cognitive target. >>
Hm.>> But in the periphery there is this ongoing, continuous flicker. >> Hm. >>
And, what you can do is you can measurethe amplitude in different regions,
and the variation in the amplitude. And, at 13 hertz, the amplitude seems to
behave very much like high frequencyalpha, the high alpha components. >>
Hm.>> Which is different to the low alpha component. >> Hm. >> You can also
measure the changes in thephase difference between the stimulus and the
response. >> Hm.>> In a sense the stimulus gives you an absolute reference.
>> Hm.>> And so what you can do then islook at the variations in the phase
between the stimulus andthe response. Which gives you, indirectly,a variation
in the latency. >> Hm. >> And, and what we have doneis we have essentially
made the assumption that variations in latencyreflect variations in
neuroprocessing speed along a complex polysynapticpathway, but, but,
nevertheless. Variations in processing speed. And that if there is an increasein
processing speed, that is to say a shorter latency that is more unambiguously
associated withincreased activity in a particular region. There's generally,
things tend tooccur but faster if cells are more depolarized they're close tothe
threshold firing voltage. The synaptic delays tendto be a bit shorter. So if you
have a stringof synaptic delays, the overall response tends to occura little bit
earlier and, and later, and it's very common on manytransient evoked
responses. And we, we looked at those changes inlatency, which seem to be
very sensitive. >> In a range of differentcognitive processes, we looked at
initially, visualattention and long time ago in 1990, we published our first paper
on lookingat, in this case, changes in amplitude. But we then looked atdecision
making tasks, like there's a task known asthe Wisconsin card sort where you
have to make a change in the strategyof how you sort cards. >> Hm. >> And
people with Schizophrenia,for example, have difficulty. They, they perseverate.
They continue using the wrong strategywhen they're getting feedback that they
should change. >> Right. >> And we, we've published a range ofstudies then,
and more recently and we published in areas cognitive,like clinical
neuroscience, such as Schizophrenia andAttention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder. >> Hm. >> More recently, I've been interestedin functional
connectivity using the responses to measure what'sknown as partial
coherence. In other words, looking atthe relationship between various cortical
regions and how that changeswith time because it looks like this methodology
is able to track rapidchange in functional connectivity. >> Hm. And, so, I'm, I'm
currently working up a paper on ADHDand changes in functional connectivity.
We've already published some stuff on thechanges in functional connectivity
with visual imagery andin particular the mental rotation task. How does, how
does the brain organizeitself when an image is rotated in, in your mind? >>
Right. >> and, and there are specific regions,and there are parietal to frontal
connectivity changes which are associatedspecifically with the rotation phase.
So those are the [CROSSTALK] thoseare the sort of clinical background. >>
Yeah, so, so when it comes kind of the,the functional connectivity, and maybe
you should clarify the difference betweenfunctional connectivity research and
what that means. Relative to, you know, well many people kind of understand
askind of a brain scan in general which is kind of pinpointing some specific
partsof the brain that are active right? >> Right, right, right. >> Can you talk a
bit about that? >> I could, sure, sure, sure. Okay there are numerous
windowsinto brain activity and there are numerous windowsinto functional
connectivity. Now what I mean by functionalconnectivity is we know for
example, that certain regions of the brainhave nueropathways that are the
same myelinative nerve patternsgoing from one region to another region. In
other word there isa structural connectivity. You can see one region talksto
another region, and this is known as structural connectivity. And the brain, the
human brain is one ofthe most richly interconnected structures. >> Mm-hm. >>
You can almost go from any partof the cortex to any other cortex in three sign
ups that the you're there. The point is that at any time whenwe are performing
any sort of task, it is necessary for certain regions of thebrain to to
communicate with each other. And, more importantly, it is important for other
regions not to communicate with eachother, because it would sort of interfere.
>> Hm. >> And, so, we call these selectivecommunications, functional
connectivity. >> Right.>> As opposed to structural connectivity. Now, there are
a number of ways you canlook at this functional connectivity. In fMRI, for
example,where you're looking at changes in blood oxygenation level, the
BOL,the BOLD response, so to speak. What you can do,is you can look at
different voxels and you can look at the correlationbetween the variations in
time of the BOLD response ofthat voxel and other voxels. >> Hm.>> And those
that are, are more correlated,we infer communicate more. >> Mm. >> Now this
is,this is actually a growing area. Where people have got veryinterested in a
particular network. Which becomes more apparent whenyou're doing nothing
in particular. >> Hm.>> The so-called default mode network, although it's not
reallynothing in particular. It's actually the social brain. >> Hm. Which is the
important one,not just the do nothing brain. >> I, think, one of the crucial my
ownkind of criticism of that is that they're kind of bypassing the whole
psychologicalliterature from the 60s and 70s, though, though lookedat mind
wandering and. What's tuits, wha, wha, what's calledtuits in a task unrelated its
images and thoughts, you know. >> Yep, yep.>> Very active phase. We even
have William Jamestalking about that kind of, active phase of thinking
aboutnothing in that situation. So I think.>> Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Yeah, yeah,
yeah, ex, exactly. Well, it's, it's actually veryrelevant to a paper I'm writing now
on ADHD because one of the key theoriesbehind ADHD is that it's the intrusion
of the default mode networkwhen the executive networks and the attentional
networks should be,should be kicking in, so to speak. >> Mm-hm. >> So. now,
that's generally looked at with fMRI. The pro, not the problem, but the
issuehere is that, of course, what you're looking at is a phenomenon that
occursover relatively slow time course. Because you are limitedby essentially
the, the rate at which the BOLDresponse can change. And that's related to
vascular changes,etcetera. So, you're typically looking atthings of less than 0.5
Hz or lower. >> Hm.>> Or lower. >> Hm.>> Now, we know, we know from other
areas thatquite often neural networks and the connectivities canbe frequency
specific. In other words, you'll see certainpatterns of connectivity at 40 Herz.
>> Mm-hm.>> That you don't see, for example, at the alpha frequency
range,and others, so what we're looking at with SSTfunctional connectivity is if
you will, the window into connectivityobserved at around 13 hertz. Now, of
course, you have nothing like the spatialresolution that you have with fMRI.
Nevertheless it does appear to beenough resolution, particularly if one could
combine some of the inverse imagingmethodologies to increase the spatial
resolution to, to yield usefulinformation certainly about the cortex. >> Hm. >>
The deeper regions are, you know,are a separate, are a separate story. But this
is a very long roundaboutway of answering your question. How I got, I got,
sothat's been my predominant interest and to be frank that's an areathat I still
work in. One of my, one of the areasthat flowed from the ADHD work is the
neural correlates of creativity. There's some very interesting work that,that I'm
looking at which I'm hoping to publish early next year onthe neural correlates
of creativity. But, it struck me that the steady-statetopography methodology,
because it can track rapid changes, could finda use in the commercial world as
well. And could find, could be the basis tosupport my research projects in a
manner to which I'd like to be come accustomedto so, so that was the original
race. There was an early attempt toestablish it with the university and that
didn't come to anything and. In 2005, I decided to take somepartial leave from
the university, go part time to the, with the university,and establish Neuro-
Insight and so, in a roundabout way,that's how I got to the ear. I find the ear
actually very interesting. it's, it's one of the first areaswhere there's a real
impact with the neuroscientists outside the,the medical clinic and the
laboratory. >> Hm.>> And I think neuro, neuro circle neuromarketing which I'm
notcrazy about the word but consumer neuro science is really just the
beginningof ice, the tip of the iceberg cause I think there will be many areas
whereneuroscience will have a profound impact. >> Hm. >> On many areas of
our lifeoutside of you know, just, just the medical clinic etcetera, so I thinkwe
are, we're in very interesting times. >> Mm-hm.Absolutely. But it sounds to me
that, one of thethings that you do, sort of, is that you haven't made the full
transition, soto speak, from doing academic research and then all the way over
to,to doing commercial [INAUDIBLE] but you. So you tend to continuously kind
ofdo your academic research maybe even clinical work and then combine that
withthe, with the commercial work is there, is there a solid reason forthat or is
it most people? >> No, no, no, it's, it's,it's to be frank Neuro-Insight itself it's
headquartered in Melbourne, Australiaand but we have a subsidiary in New
York. We have a subsidiary in London, we alsohave a licensed operation in, in
Munich. And the, the, the company is doing well. We can talk a bit more about
what it does,etcetera, but I'm in the happy situation where I'mable to indulge
my interests as well as give some guiding hand tothe development of Neuro-
Insight. So, sure,I'm involved in some presentation, to, some pictures for
example, butnot terribly, not too much, I'm really more involved in someof the
higher order levels. And because I still have myaffiliation with the university,
I'm able to do some research by, essentially by collaborating with withsome of
my, my academic collaborators. >> Hm.>> So it's a matter of whether I'm
efficiently splitting my time ornot I don't know, but. I'm enjoying myself. >> But
you are also seeing that,some of your academic research, is that sometimes
used toinform the commercial insights? And also the other way, is there
somekind of mutual benefit to having both? >> Look, there is, there is. I mean
first of all. I'm finding that, that, you know,my knowledge of, of the
neuroscience and my experience, is, in fact,quite often, very, very useful in
understandingwhat's going on and actually, the, my ability just to at least
understand theneuroscience picture or to introduce or to get involved in an
area that I maynot have been involved in earlier. >> Hm.>> It's, it's, it's been
extremely,it's been extremely useful. So, but also, surprisingly,it can go the
other way as well. One of the things that,that I'm very interested in is the whole
phenomenon of how long term memory isorganized around event boundaries.
>> Mm-hm. >> And it's, it's, it's a phenomenon that,that we, we came across in,
of all things, in advertising research. >> Mm-hm.>> We found that, wherever
there was a point wherethere was a resolution of a story, something became
resolved, or where,where one story ended and another story. Or more
generally, anything which seemed to suggest thisis the end of the preceding
experience, and it could be symbolic, orit could be very explicit, so. We found
there was a sharpbrief drop in long term memory. And we saw this over,
andover, and over again. And I, and I began to think, now waita minute, this is
telling us something. >> Mm-hm.>> And I got so I, I, I had a closer look and,
and, andI started looking at the literature, which was mainly cognitive
literature, onhow the brain processes event boundaries. And there's no doubt
that,that the brain processes experiences. Not as a continuous sausage soto
speak, but as discreet events. >> Mm-hm.>> And it's those events which are
stored asunitary structures, and they are stored in the cortex,in the brain, in
various regions. And they link by associationto other events. And so, the point
is,you have to essentially turn time-extended phenomenon intoa discrete
unitary event, so you've got to work out,where is the event boundary? Now, we
found this. This drop which we call conceptualclosure we presented a paper
early this year at the DecisionNeuroscience Conference where we actually
designed an academic research,where we actually had people in a virtual
reality environment walking throughthe rooms of a gallery, an art gallery. And
our hypothesis was, as they walk from one room toanother room and I see the
door. Essentially it would triggerthis conceptual closure effect. >> Mm-hm.>>
Because it's, it's the end of this room,now it's the beginning of the next room.
>> Mm-hm.>> And, sure enough, that's precisely what happened. >> Mm-hm.
>> And it's not the same as attention. Attention behaves slightly differently. >>
Mm-hm.>> It was very much a phenomenon, that was related to. Memory, long
term memory at that. >> Mm-hm.>> Now that has now sort of led me into
thinking, I really want to design a largerresearch project in collaboration with
somebody else, looking at thisaspect of long term memory encoding. Because
I think it is a, a similarphenomenon to the attentional blink. >> Mm-hm.>>
Except the attentional blink occurs on a much, much shorter time scale. You're
talking about twoto 300 milliseconds. >> Mm-hm. >> Whereas this occurson a
longer time scale. But, I think it's a very, I thinkthe brain recapitulates very
similar and functional mechanisms ondifferent time scales, so you have
differenthierarchies of time scale. >> Mm-hm. >> There's an interesting workby
Ravinsky, I think it is. Those papers that cameout a few years ago. Walking
through doorways makes you forget. >> Yep, exactly.Yeah. >> exactly. And,
and, and I think, I think it isrelated to the event boundary phenomenon. >> Hm.
>> And because I think literally,prior to walking through the door, in a sense
before you encounter an eventboundary, the information is stored, I believe, in
a more activeform within the hippocampus, in a more accessible formwithin
the hippocampus. The moment the brain encounters an eventboundary, the,
then basically the, the processing of the,the memory then takes place. And
then it starts to be consolidated andencoded in other parts of the cortex. And,
hence its accessibility. Changes. >> Hm.>> And that's my, that's my take on
why walkingthrough doorways makes you forget. >> Well, it's.>> Very nice
doorway behind you by the way. That's. [LAUGH]. >> [LAUGH] Well see in
manyways people are thinking, about this as a kind of resetting,almost like a
mental reboot almost. So, so and I prefer to have the kindof understanding
when it come so the hippocampus because, you know, the hippocampus is
thiskind of convergence zone. Where->> Yep, yep. >> Information from the. Can
be dorsal stream orthe ventral stream kind of joins- >> Yep, yep, yep.>>
Together to make coherent episodes as I tend to look at it. >> Yep, yep. >> And
it's disrupted functionpeople tend to forget. >> Yep, yep, yep. >> So how do
you? How are you going about in measuring the, these kind of potentials,these
kind of processes? >> the, the, the, the main one thatwe are, that we are
looking at in this case is what we refer toas long term memory encoding. >>
Mm-hm.>> Now and, and there that's based on a lot of. Proceeding work by
other, by others indicating that activity inthe lateral frontal cortical regions
seems to index the activity seemsto index how strongly encoded. A memory,
an image is and, andthere's a lot of work on you know, images that are
presented whenactivity's high there tend to be. Were called better, and, you
know, we published,gosh we published this 14 years ago. [LAUGH] And and,
you know,we basically looked at, you know, can, can we replicate thiseffect
using the steady state response, looking at the latency variations in thesteady
state response and, and based on. Advertising that had neverbeen in other
words, images in advertising thathad never been seen before. >> Mm-hm.>>
And which was tested after one viewingonly one week later. >> Mm-hm. >> and,
and you know, what we found wasthat in fact it was consistent with, what the
literature suggested aswell before EG and FMRI literature. >> Mm-hm.>> That
these regions seemed to index the strength oflong-time memory encoding. So
when we looked at, for example,the conceptual closure effect it was primarily
based onactivity in those regions. Which we used to infer was. A memory
encoding phenomenon. >> Right.>> So that's, that's the, that's the approach
here. >> I, I think this relates to kind ofalso what's been called the I assume.
[CROSSTALK]. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Right. And, and I, if I recall
correctly,you, you do. Distinguish between the asymmetries inmore like the
dorsal regions as opposed to maybe, more ventral regions asymmetriesthat
could be related to motivation? Is that so? >> it's.We tend to work more with
the dorsal regions. >> Mm-hm. >> The, the, the model it, it, it, it goesthrough
cycles of popularity and then, and then people say no, no, that's nonsense,and
central link comes back again. it, the, the brain has evolved in a
veryinconvenient way for neuromarketers. >> Mm-hm.>> [LAUGH] >> They, the
point is that there does appear to bea preferential role for left hemisphere,
particularly fornovel information, for novel imagery. And it does appear to be
more of a rolefor the right hemisphere region, and I'm talking about
theselateral frontal regions. >> Mm-hm. >> When for imagery that has already
beenpreviously seen, having said that there is also evidence for model, and all
the otherfor influencing the asymmetry as well. >> Mm-hm.>> So for example
more analytic verbal content,tends to be preferentially encoded by the left
hemisphere andthere is evidence that, that, for example, imagery, for example,
rhythmtends to be also preferentially encoded. There is an encoding role ofthe
right hemisphere as well. >> Mm-hm.>> So it looks like, you know, as I said if
we had, maybe if we had much higher spatialresolution you could disentangle
those, but quite often we currently usethe context to sort of infer. what, what's
going on. >> Mm-hm.>> The other sorts of measures that, that, that we, that we
look at those,the front [INAUDIBLE] apollo one, you know sort, essentially of
area tin. Which, is associated with selfreverential processes for example. and,
and we, we simply use the term andmaybe it's an unfortunate one,
engagement. >> Mm-hm. >> as, as, as, as sort of the,the measure to there. Will
the, the the left right. Prefrontal asymmetry, seems to beassociated with
motivational valence or approach withdrawal. It's not like-dislike. >> Mm-hm.>>
Although it can sometimes overlap with that. But it's not, it's not like-dislike. >>
Mm-hm. >> Andthat's one of the problems with EEG, that, that if you're using
alpha amplitude toinfer the activity, the alpha amplitude. Is ambiguously
relatedto underlying activity. >> Mm-hm.>> You can have a situation where
alpha is lower, and that meansthe underlying region is more active, yes. But
you can also have a situationin a working memory task, where you have to
hold things online. >> Mm-hm.>> Wolfgang shown this, you can have an
increase in alpha. Should and it and, and that's associatedwith increased
activity as well. So the, those other measures been addition there'sthe obvious
visual attention measures. The which are basically the left andright occipital,
occipital regions. And the right parietal temporal occipital,region, which, which
from [INAUDIBLE] work andmany others seems to be. Seems to be
correlatedstrongly with arousal. >> Mm-hm. >> And we simply refer tothat as
emotional intensity. >> Mm-hm.>> So, in other words and they're just, they're,
they're the sum of the the, the, the measures that we reporton on a regular
basis. >> Mm-hm. So this is going into whatyou do at a neuro-insight. >> Yeah,
yeah.>> Can you talk a bit about how. So what, what is neuro-insight today,and
what are you doing? You know, you have, you start offin Melbourne, but, as
you also say, you are distributed acrossthe globe basically. So, so what are
you doing? What are you up to? >> Okay, well the, there are certain, most of
our, most of our workis communications evaluation. >> Mm-hm. >> Certainly
looking attelevision advertisement. Looking at, we've looked at things
veryearly such as concepts, where you just, someone says various concepts
and you can, you can certainly see variationsin engagement, memory
encoding. Emotional intensity with various concepts. Two of things like, story
boards,for example, to anamatics. Otherwise, all these various stageswithin the
advertising process, to mere finished commercials. >> Mm-hm.>> And, quite
often what, one of the things we can adviseis not just what's happening. But
also, what can be done to improvethe effectiveness of the communication,
because there are,there are a number of factors? One, forexample sometimes
what you find is that people who put the branding information, we found that
the most powerfulcorrelative to advertising effectiveness, is the level of
longterm memory encodingat the time of key message or branding. >> Mm-
hm.>> That's the, that's, that's the important one. Now, I want to come back
later to,so why memories are so important? >> Mm-hm.>> You know, big deal.
And that, that, let's come back to that. So what we, what we find sometimesis
that, when an ad is created for example they might be a narrativethere might be
something unresolved. >> Mm-hm.>> A joke, it could be something. And then.
There was resolution. >> Mm-hm.>> And then what invariably happens is, the
branding takes placeimmediately after that, because it's thought,that's the
logical place to put it. >> Mm-hm.>> And yet, we've found many times,you have
conceptual close. In other words,the brand is saying, oh, okay. I've got the
narrative. I'm, I'm busy now just fora second or two. But that's that crucial
second ortwo, which is the conceptual close. There was a. We, there was a nice
example that[INAUDIBLE] in the U.S. looked at. This is the Evian Live Young
campaign,which comprises people, the earlier version was peoplewalking
down the street and they'd look into theirreflection in the shop window. And I
see themselves as a baby. You know,they start doing these weird dance
moves. >> Mm-hm.>> And the babies do it exactly [INAUDIBLE]. It's really cute.
>> Mm-hm.>> It is fantastically popular. I think now it was,was launched in last
year, 2013, and I think there have been over 200million views and downloads.
>> Mm-hm.>> So it's been fantastically popular. but, what, when we looked at
it, andwe looked at it twice in New York, with cat owners and dog owners,
becausewe were doing a study for another client. And what we found wasthat
in the case of the, the dog owners, there's one scenewhere an old woman
walking a dog. See's herself as a baby and starts, and the baby, and the dog is
alsoa young dog as well, a puppy. >> Mm-hm.>> And she starts doing a stupid
dance move and the, the baby just looks at her,which is the joke, you know. >>
Mm-hm.>> But what we found is that with the, the dog owners, there was a
hugeresponse when they saw the dog. >> Mm-hm.>> Which they, which the cat
owners [LAUGH] didn't see. It was memory encoding. which, which, buthere's
the interesting part. When they got to the end,the screen changed to a uniform
color, more of a white, the branding came on,the music sort of slowed down,
etc. And then the voice of Avion over came on. What we saw in, in both the dog
owners and the cat owners, is a dramatic drop inmemory encoding as the
screen went white. It was basically a classicconceptual closure. And that's
exactly when they branded. And what did we find? We find that, that while it
was wildlypopular in the first year, in fact in that first year of its launch, sales
went down,went backwards for Avion by 4%. >> Mm-hm.>> And they lost, they
lost market share. In other words,if the popularity of the commercial had
translated into if, you know,consumer behavior changes, you would've
expected at leastthey would've hold their own. Or maybe even theirmarket
share had grown. In fact, in went, it went the other way. >> Mm-hm.>> And
that's completely consistent with what we saw, which was essentially a drop in
memoryencoding around the time of branding. >> Mm-hm. >> so, you know,
the, the, so,conceptual closure is one that there are, there are other
phenomenonas well such as the, the environment so this is sortof
communication effectiveness. We found that for example, the
environmentwhich, in which a commercial is seen, can have a powerful effect
onthe level of memory encoding. >> Mm-hm. >> Particularly if, you know,in the
case of a television program, you seem to go into a particular,if you will, neuro-
state. Another words, there's a particularbalance, it's a relatively stable state,
you know, if you look at the average, and. If the neuro-state ofthe
advertisement and the, and the preceding program are similar
theadvertisement seems to, to get boosted. >> Mm-hm.>> On the other hand, if
they're fighting each other,in other words if they're in fact. The opposite, other
words, the program, you're paying attention tothe detail, the dialogue, et
cetera, but the ad is very much a big pictureof visual et cetera with- You find in
fact, that it's,it's less effective. So the environment can have,can have a, a quite
a powerful effect. So those are the sorts, so that we've done quite a bit
ofentertainment research as well. >> Mm-hm.>> And media research in, with
other things such asthe multiple screen phenomenon, what happens when
you're watchinga program and you're tweeting as well. >> Hm.>> Does that
actually reduce memory incurring? Does it and we published that in theJournal
of Advertising Research last year. >> Mm-hm.>> So it's probably, you know,
most of it's 50/50 media and andcommunication and some research. >> Hm. >>
But if it's okay,could I just comment briefly on why do I carry on about memory
all the time,you know, why, why is memory? >> Yeah, yeah I was just about
toask you about that, so absolutely. >> Yeah, yeah I think,look it's unimportant
because you know, when you think of memory it's not assexy as engagements,
and emotion, and you know, et cetera. So, you know, and let's face it,that's
where all the buzz is, you know? But you know, I think, I'm not sayingthese,
these other measures are important unimportant they are important, but
let'sjust look from from two perspectives, one from a very simple,almost a
logical perspective. >> Hm. >> If the information doesn't go intolong-term
memory specifically, and most importantly, the link to the brand,if it, if that
does not go into long term memory, then essentially after halfan hour, it is as if
it had never existed. >> Hm.>> Because it cannot affect humanbehavior in the
future. You know, memory is the m, is the time machine to influencefuture
behavior from the past. >> Hm.>> So that's, that's an obvious one. But, there's
a more important andsubtle reason as well. And that is this,it's maybe an
evolutionary argument. If you, if you look at every day,you are exposed to
thousands, hundreds of thousands of differentperceptions, different
experiences. Do you encourage every single one of thoseinto long-term
memory with equal strength? You don't.>> Hm. >> If, if you were walking
across the roadand you almost got hit by a car, or someone tooted their horn
andemotions come up, you would remember that. >> Hm.>> If you saw
something that, that made you curious,you would remember that. If you saw
something that, that,that was of special significance to you in terms of it was a,
it reminded you ofsomething else, your childhood, et cetera. In other words,
memory,almost anything that has evolved, has evolved because ithas a
survival value. >> Hm. >> Nothing has, nothing has oc,has has evolved if it
doesn't ultimately, directly or indirectly, for the individualor the species, have a
survival value. The same applies to memory. Memory didn't evolve sothat you
could remember an ad. Memory evolved so that informationof relevance to
your survival and, and, could be incurred, and the point isthat those things
which are of greatest, which the brain deems to beof greatest relevance to you,
are the ones thatare stored most strongly. >> Hm.>> So if you see strong
encoding of, for example, the branding information,what that means is, that the
narrative, the story has somehowcreated the conditions which says this is of
importance to me. >> Mm.>> And it's encoded. So in a sense, long term in
memoryencoding is the final common pathway. And it could be triggered by
emotion. It could be triggered by many emotions. It could be triggered by joy. It
could be triggered by anger. It could be triggered by fear. It could be triggered
et cetera,by jealousy, you name it. It could be triggered by curiosity. It could be
triggered by a sense ofengagement and relevance, et cetera. There's, there're,
but the point is,if it hits a hot button, whichever one it is,it goes into longterm
memory. >> Mm.>> So that's why, you know, we, we believe that we can,we
measure other measures as well. Engagement, immersion intensity et
cetera,but the one which we think is importantfrom both a theoretical and you
know, a pragmatic reason isthe long term memory encoding. I'd be interested
in youropinion on that actually. >> Yeah my kind of question to that iswhen we
talk about long term memory, we say long term memory's not justone thing,
you know, you have the, the highly declarative memories thatyou have and you
also have all that. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> All that procedural andimplicit
memories. >> Yeah. >> Do you distinguish about, and how do you distinguish
betweenthose kinds of memories? >> Oh, oh, oh okay. >> And do you also see
itdifferently in effects in, you know,the explicit versus non-explicit? >> Yeah,
yeah, okay. look, before I answer that I thinkone of the important things that I
should mention is you know,when I go to con, to conferences, people, I hear
peoplegive talks, and I sort of think, my God. They're saying we can measure
all thethings that, you know, that I believe we, we can measure. So, you know,
what, you know, are they really measuring exactly the samething because
they're using, say, a different methodology, like EEG? Now, the point is
memory is,is a single term which means many things. >> Mm.>> One of the
most important distinctions is the distinctionbetween very short-term or
working memory. >> Hm. >> Which is much more related toattention, and long-
term memory. And these are, this is probably the mostfundamental distinction,
because one is dependent on active synapticprocesses taking place, neural
activity, and it is linked toa penchant without a doubt. >> Hm.>> So if you're
measuring a penchant you're probably measuringsomething analogous to, to
working memory. But that is not the sameas long term memory. Some people
have argued of course, if it'sin working memory you know, if it's not in working
memory, it can't go into long-termmemory, that's not actually correct. There is
evidence of, you know,memory without awareness. There is, there is, there is
m, thereis evidence of, things do not have to go into conscious working
memory forthem to go into, into long-term memory. As far as your other
question of long-termmemory look, there there, long-term memory is in fact
almost both differentstructures but is also a process. >> Mm-hm.>> For one
thing, the way that you remember somethingthat happened yesterday, which is
long-term memory by definition, is quitedifferent to the memory of your
childhood. So there is you know, there is the remotelong-term memory, recent
long-term memory, and in fact, there is evidenceof long term memory, you
know, images being continuously unpacked, reorganized with more recent
memories andthen repacked, et cetera. It's a continuous, ongoing process. >>
Hm.>> And then on top of that,of course, you're quite right. Have the, the you
know, procedure,various kinds of procedural memories. In terms of the implicit
andexplicit you can have a situation where explicitmemories become implicit
over time. >> Hm. >> You know, the,in other words, you, you, you, you no
longer have conscious access tothem and yet if you look at the various kinds
of priming or, or, or, or, or, orsort of ranking of things, you find that your
ranking choices are based on whatyou've been exposed to in the past. Even
though you can't recall why you areranking these various items in the way, in
the way that you are. You know,I'm sure you're very familiar with that. We, in, in
our case, based on mylimited reading of the literature, we don't
differentiatebetween implicit and explicit, because what we're
actuallymeasuring is what is being encoded. >> Hm. >> Whether it, it,what
aspect of it then remains, you know, the autobiographical memories
versus,you know, semantic memories, versus we, we sort of keep, we, weare
agnostic as far as that is concerned. What we're simply sayingis something is
going in. >> Hm.>> And, and, and we can measure how strongly it's,it is being
encoded. And initially it will be encodedin the hippocampus, initially. >> Hm,
hm.>> But then it will be reorganized all over the place, andit'll even include the
the cerebellum. >> Right. >> But that's a separate story. >> Right. [LAUGH]
Absolutely. so, so, one thing is how, you,you've been taking part in, you know,
your marketing andconsumer neuroscience, or you know, more broadly, you
know,applied neuroscience since- >> Yeah.>> I would say almost the beginning
here in the you know, during the past couple,actually, couple decades I would
even say. >> I can, I can be embarrassed. I can embarrass myself and tell you
the,the, the time that I talked my university into establishing a company todo
neuro-marketing, it didn't go anywhere. So I'm not, I don't actually count it,but
do you know the, the year was 1985. >> Wow, wow. >> You know,now look it
didn't raise any money. I don't know if you remembered in 1987there was a
financial crash, and, and, and that was the [LAUGH] end,that was the end of
that. But that's, I got the idea,I thought wow, this could be useful. But so, I've,
I've been interested in thisarea, and I've seen it come and go, and I think it is
now here for real, and maybe we can talk later about the future,et cetera. But
you know, yeah,I've been around for a while. >> Yeah, this that was actually my
nextquestion, kind of a rounding up question, is you know, since you've seen
this,comes ups and downs and they'll, they'll be in a couple of,of hills and
plummets here as well. So, what do you think, you were sayingtoday we seem
to be more consolidated. We see that it's being applied. We, we see, you know,
in companiesaround the world are using it. We have as your own company is,is
establishing a world service for this. But so what, what is the,what is the future
in your perspective? What, what is the,the near but alsopossibly the, the more
distant future? >> Okay look, that's,that's a fascinating question. I give it,I give
it quite a bit of thought. I, I think, first of all, I think,you know, the, the impact of
consumer neuroscience and neuromarketingis only going to get stronger. I
think this time, it's really here. And I think it's time, it's,it's here for a variety of
reasons. First of all, the, our understandingof the brain has advanced more so
that we now have insights which are reallyimportant to foundational insights if
we're going to give any sort of advice,et cetera in this area. >> Hm. >> Two the
technology has advanced very,very significantly and, and this makes,this
makes a huge difference. And this has permitted the third arm,which is the
recognition that the traditional consumer neuroscience,consumer research
methodologies, the focus groups, the various forms of youknow, sort of
quantitative methodologies have enormous limitations when itcomes to
tapping emotional processes. Some of the more unconscious processes, so
these three factors all come together,and that's what's actually driving. And as
I said, I think neuromarketing,consumer neurosciences is just one example of
what's going to be the amazing impactof neuroscience in many areas of, of
society and, andcommercial life and society. >> Hm. >> When this particular
waveof neuromarketing broke, in the first part,the thing that really got the
earlier doctors interested wasjust the excitement of the brain. The fact that you
know, we could,we could measure the brain. >> Hm.>> And the brain, let's face
it, the brain, is a hot topic. It's interesting, it's exciting, you know? And, and
just the sheer excitementwas one of the big drivers and, and what drove people
to do studies was thewish to be considered a thought leader. >> Hm.>> You
know, we're, we did the first neuro blah,blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and this
was the first,the first fight. So, it almost,it almost didn't matter what you
reported, just the fact that you were measuring thebrain was enough to get
people excited. Okay, that phase finished about three orfour years ago, I would
say. And that's when it started to finish off,and, and now, you are seeing a
shake out. And now you are seeinga second wave where, in a sense,the clients
are now more informed. >> Hm. >> And now you need more thanjust a pretty
brain picture. >> Hm. >> Now, you need to actually besupplying which makes a
difference to the bottom line. >> Hm. >> I have, you know, I have my, my set
ofcriteria, what I call validity utility. And in the course of, of validity,in other
words, is this stuff real? Are the measures that you claim tomeasure, do they
actually exist? Is there evidence they exist? Two, does the technology or
methodologyyou use measure what you claim to exist? You know, is there
evidence for that? >> Hm. >> And three, are you,are you sort of doing it
properly? In other words are you,you know, like adding the right? Doing the
fMRI properly. That's what I call validity. You know, but, but you need to go
tothe next stage, which is utility. And now we're coming to the utility part,which
is, is what you are telling me something that I don't already knowfrom other
market researchers. Because if it's something I, you know, if you're telling me
thatmales respond to semi-naked females. Oh wow, I mean, so tell me,you
know, what's the big deal? You know?>> Right. >> So you have to tell me
somethingI don't already know, point one. And point two, what you're tellingme
that I don't already know, has to make a differenceto the bottom line. >> Hm.>>
Because if you're just telling me something that's just purely of
academicinterest, and it's interesting to you, but so what? And, you know, it's
no use to me. And third,can you deliver on a timescale and on a cost to make
it,to make it realistic? Have you got appropriatenumbers of the statistics? The
laws of statistics as they say, don't go out the window becauseyou're doing
your own marketing. >> Hm. >> So that's, that's the next phase, but,what I see
is happening now, is that the, the serves, the newer marketing servicesare
splitting into two broad categories. There is one that I'd call the highvolume
scalable type of services. >> Hm.>> And, some of the ones that you're offering
f,fit into that categor. And those are coming in high volume. Hm, you know,
modest price and, and they, I think,will permeate very quickly if, you know, with
the return, because you know, it,it makes a lot of sense to do that. >> Hm.>>
And then I think you will also have the low volume, more high high costmore
consulting type of services. >> Hm.>> And so you'll have those two
streamsrunning I think simultaneously. >> Hm.>> So that's what I see sort of
happening now, in, in the longer term, I see sort ofneuroscience insides being
incorporated. Automatically into almost everythingthat we do in the future. >>
Mm-hm. >> You see at present, for example,I remember, you know, 20 years
ago, 25, 30 years ago, there, there were a wholeseries of courses on computer
programming. Everybody needed to do computer. Now, so many of the things
that, would that people were taught to do to,to program are now available as
packages. And it's just assumed that youknow how to run excel, you know,
even at school,it's assumed you know how to do it. In other words, all the sorts
of thingswhich 20, 30 years ago were assumed to be specialist computer room,
you know, thecomputer, these are the computer geeks. And now, it's now
being it's,it's moved by osmosis. And everybody is assumed to havethe same
level of expertise. I suspect that in the long term,in the whole area of, you
know, the commercial, the marketing area,there will be a base level of
neuroscience whether you call it expertise orfamiliarity or understanding,
which is regarded as a given a nec, a necessityif you're going to work in this
area. >> Mm. >> that's, that's so, you know,I think that that's, that's where I see.
[CROSSTALK].>> So, so, so, given the, given the the kind of future on
themarket, I think one of the things we're, we're talking very much about
todayare sort of the challenges we're facing. So as you've seen the ups and
downs andyou're marking throughout the errors. What would you think are
the,the biggest challenges? You know, what, what are the issues we, weneed
to, what are the red flags basically? >> I think there are,are there're probably a
number of them. The, the ones that were more apparent tome in the past were
the ones that were associated with some of the crazy claimsmade by some of
the early neuromarketers. We know where the buy button is andwe know were
to press the buy button. This was a nonsense, butwhat it did do is it caused
organizations like Ralph Nader's consumeralert to go into overdrive and then
petition congress that neuromarketingshould be, should be banned. And you
know, there wereconferences I think in around 2004, which were cancelled. >>
Mm.>> There was one being organized I think by some people at Emory
University>> Mm. >> that, that, that had to becancelled because of public
disquiets. And this is where, why I think the ethicaldimension is very, very
important. We you know, your own site, right fromthe word go we had an
ethical charter. There are, you know, there're things wewill do, there are things
we will not do. We will not work with childrenless than 14 years of age. We will
not work on anyproducts which harm people. So just the backup products
forexample, et cetera, et cetera. So there's that, the,the other sort of, if you will,
risk I see is the aftermath ofoverclimbing and, and the hype. People make crazy
claimsthe client you know, naively takes on a project and says lookwe've tried
neuroscience, it doesn't work. >> Mm. >> and, and I won't,I won't mention
names but you know, but we all know some of the oneswho are some of the
worst offenders. So, those I,those I see as sort of two main areas at present
some of the big companies areprobably trying to have a bit each way. Some of
the big companies want to preservetheir investment in their current standard
methodologies, and I see there'sincreased interest in neuroscience. So they try
to sort of patch something onwhich says we're doing neuroscience also, if you
want it. And that can give the impression thatneuroscience is really an
afterthought, and possibly a littlebit irrelevant as well. >> Mm. >> Those are the
main areas I see as as, as having an impact onthe development of the field. >>
Mm. >> I'd be interested in your thoughts. >> Well I, I, I completely agree. I think
one of the things I,I tend to distinguish between is the, you know, the
overclaiming underdelivering which is one thing. The scientific validity is
another thing. >> Mm-hm.>> And also you know, one thing is the, when it
comes tothe validity, I think that, that, that covers the whole kind of the
wholepalette of the options, you know? It comes from, as you mentioned,the
actual methodology. You know, how are you goingabout treating your data.
Just pre-processing your data is,is, you know, you, you can get horrible
results, or youcan get any results you like basically, because this is, you know,
this is the,there all a lot of big data basically. >> Yeah.>> The other thing is as
you say is this relying on existing data? Is this ecs, you know, is this published
has this been,is it reliable scientific data? And we, we see again and again I
wouldsay something like every month or something I see outrageous
claimsthat people have made this kind of new discovery that theyhave a new
methodology. How to use EG or air tracking or stufflike that, and there's no
documentation. There might be a white paper butthat really doesn't help. So
kind of helping helping the industry. Kind of sort out the,the good from the bad
there. And, andkind of setting up some standards for what should be expected
from, from this. It's, it's very important as well. And, and I think there have
been, therehave been some initial things when it comes to, you know,what
should the sample size and so and so. But I think that's kind of, is almostlike
dodging the big question and- >> Yeah.>> Which is, you know, what, what is
the actual scientific cre,credentials for this approach? >> Yeah, well, as you
know as,as the president of the NSMBA, one of the things I've been pushing
isa process of corporate accreditation. Where the accreditation,where
essentially the clients, we mainly focus on validity,not so much utility. Because
that's,that's more of a commercial question. But, validity. In other words,
neuromarketingvendors will be able to apply for corporate accreditation,
andthey will have to present evidence. First of all, that the measures they
claimto be making actually exist, you know, that's the first, and that could
bebased on their own published work or the published work of other people,
butit has to be some risk, some real work. >> Mm.>> Two, as I said, that the
methodology they are using,evidence, ideally in the form of papers can
measure what they claim to beable to measure, and evidence that they're doing
it properly in which includes thingslike statistics, et cetera, et cetera. >> Mm.>>
Now that's, we're in the process ofestablishing the the, the board, which, which
will have the, will be taskedwith you know, making these decisions. It's not an
easy one andbecause one of the problems is that, that you, you have to avoid
apparentconflicts of interest, which means that anybody who's already in
business soto speak will probably not be on. But we have, we need to have
people whohave enough expertise to be able to understand these things. >>
Mm. >> But not I think, I think thisis going to be an important area. >> Mm.
Absolutely. >> Yeah.>> And, and, and the other thing is you know, kind of,if
you turn that around a bit. If we can ask the question, you know, arewe
actually, now when your marketing is becoming a, a kind of a tool, soto speak,
that, that marketers and market researchers are using, are weasking, are we,
are we demanding too much from, from this new technologyrelative to the
existing technology? So you have things, solutions suchas focus group
services, interviews. We know that, that has several issues andlimitations in
when it should be used and how predictive it is and so forth. >> Yeah.Yeah.
Yeah.>> Are we, with newer marketing asking too muchof newer marketing that
we don't do to the existing solutions? >> look, I, I think you're right. I, I think, I
think we are. To be, to be frank I think focusgroups are one of the sort of,
unspoken scandals that, that,sure they, they could be useful. But the way
focus group results can be soeasily manipulated. >> Mm-hm.>> It is, it is just
amazing. And so, you, you're right. I, I think neuromarketing is being put toa to
a higher demand, a higher standard. The many of the standard methodologies
andI thought that's what Bob Woodard and the IRF were trying to do in their
mostrecent [INAUDIBLE] standard too, but I don't think that's, that,I don't think
that's happened. I think the issue is,is not so much you know? Everything
must, we must use everything. We, you know?Or, or we should just use neuro,
we should just,the question, the issue is very much. What is the questionthat is
being asked and then what is the best combinationof tools to answer that
question? The question always has to come first andthen the tools and we
have on occasion, for example, used for example,focus groups and neuro. But
the way we've done it is,we've done the neuro first and then the focus groups
are guidedby the neuro results. So they know what they,if there were peaks
and troughs et cetera. In some cases the context ofwhat they were viewing tells
you why they were there, butin either case it's ambiguous. >> Hm.>> And this
is where, in fact, you can probe in other words,focus groups, neuro will never
tell you the answer to why, it will tellyou what is happening but not why. >> Hm.
>> For the why, you have to ask questions. >> Hm.>> And then you have to be
careful. The answer they give is notnecessarily the real reason [LAUGH]. >>
Exactly. So, now, you know,- >> Yeah, ,. Thomas, unfortunately,I'm going to
have to go very soon. I've got another 7:30, for me, it's,in, in six minutes, I have
to,- >> Oh, absolutely.>> Do a Skype call to London, I'm really sorry about this.
>> No, absolutely, we- >> I'm enjoying this, by the way. >> [LAUGH] Me too.
Yeah, I think, I think, one, my, my,actually my final question is, for people who
are entering this field, andI get, as you do very likely just as I do get a lot of
requests frompeople who want to do this. They are interested in this, they can
seefrom the outside this is, this is it, this is an interesting thing to do butthey
don't know where to start, where to go, you know,should we just go the
commercial way? Should we study this,should we study that? What, what are
your recommendations forpeople who want to enter this field? >> oh, look, I
very, very strongly recommend a structured fieldof study with, with, without a
doubt. And certainly as a minimum some cognitivescience psychology, as a
minimum, but the point is that cognitive science isreally becoming cognitive
neuroscience. You know, you really cannot,you can't, you know 30, 40 years.
You could do psychology without even,I'm talking about the brain that's, that's
impossible and it shouldnever have even been possible then. But, so, you've
got, I think,I think we're in a very, very fortunate situation where, forexample,
we have courses like the one that you're offering, which enables people
toessentially take on this field of study. But I think it's absolutelycrucial that a
course of, of, of, of, study in cognitive neuroscience, and in particular the
most, the issues thathave most relevance to consumer behavior. As I've said,
I,I like very much your book. >> Hm. >> I thought it was I thinkit was a very
important book. And I think it was reallywell written and, as I said- >> Thank
you.>> I think, I think you'll get a lot of use for it. But it, it focuses on
thoseareas that are most relevent and does them,it does them in a rigorous
fashion. I, I my, my compliments to you. >> Thank you. >> It worked, it is really
good.