4.

4 EEG method

HI, I'm Dalia Badziunaite. I'm coming from Center of Decision Neuroscience. I
am a PhD student in here and basically what I do I investigate the different kind
of choices in different kind of environments. So basically how brands are
affecting our decisions, how products are affecting our decisions, what is the
impact of ads to our neurobiological and neuropsychological processes. I'm
going to be assisting Thomas in this course, and today I'm going to present
different kind of tools we are using here in our lab to investigate non-
conscious aspects of the choices. And why is it important to understand the
unconscious aspect of your choice? Think about your own daily life. In the
morning you wake up while turning on your iPhone and checking the
Facebook. What is that? It's just non-conscious addiction. When you think
about the supermarket choices, you enter the supermarket. Most of the time
you end up with more goods than you think of before. So when we think about
applying different kind of tool to investigate non-conscious aspects of a
choice. We can do it in two different kind of environments. We can do it in the
very controlled lab environment where we are now, in here. And we can do it as
well in in-store setting. Where actually people are facing the more ecologically
valid situations where they have different kind of social interactions, and much
more stimuli around them. >> Neural marketing methods can be used both in
lab settings and in mobile settings. Basically that means that we can use
stationary setups with stationary computers in, where people are facing a
computer and wearing either EEG or GSR, and are being measured for their
brain responses or their eye fixations. Alternatively, we can also use mobile
EEG and mobile eye tracking to measure how people are responding while
they're in, for example, a store environment. >> So, when we think about two
different kind of environments, what is the difference of studying the choices is
the control of different kind of factors. When we think about the lab we can
actually study the choices which are in the much controlled situations. So for
instance the ad effects, in there we can recreate the real environment where a
person is sitting in front of a TV and seeing different kinds of ads in the middle
of his documentary, favorite documentary. Or, another example could be the
unconscious aspect of preference, taste preference. For instance, you can give
the participant in the lab, different kind of wines or chocolate, while showing
different kind of brands or price information. And not only ask how much they
like it, but actually investigate their neural reactions, as well as visual
reactions. >> Eye tracking is normally used by using infrared cameras that are
measuring where people are looking. They're picking up the pupils of each eye
and they're measuring where people are looking, as long as you've calibrated
the system perfectly. What you can also use with the eye tracking is to
measure pupil dilation and even how people are moving forward and
backwards towards the screen. You can use eye tracking both as a stationary
setup, where the eye tracker is mounted typically under the screen or as part of
a piece of glasses that you are wearing. But the mechanism is typically the
same using infrared camera in both instances. >> So to investigate the
consumer choices and basically the decision making processes in lab. We
usually apply different kind of tools, the combination of different kind of tools.
And to, to investigate the visual information, basically how fast we fixate on the
brand or the ad, as well as if we know the certain elements that the brand or the
ad wants to communicate to us. As well as the pupil dilation that, that tells us
about emotional reaction we have. >> EEG, or electroencephalogram, is the
method we are using. Electrodes, positioned on the outside of the skull, to
measure the electrical discharges from the brain. Electrical discharges comes
mainly from the dendrites of each cells. It's a receiving end of each cell. And
what we are measuring are different frequencies of the brain. We can
distinguish between different frequencies and different changes in the
frequencies across the skull. >> To investigate different kind of neural
reactions we have we use this EEG, which we combine together with the eye
tracker. What we can do with that, we can actually measure the brain reaction
via these electrodes see in here. So while EEG connected to the eye tracker we
can actually not only see if the person noticed something, but actually if he
was engaged, what, what was the work load of information? At the same time
when the person is watching different kind of advertisement or commercial on
the eye tracker we can as well track their facial expressions and identifies
seven basic emotions. So for example if you would have a situation where you
would be very interested in the motivation score of the person looking at the
different product or interacting with a different kind of stimuli in the shop. Then
you should take into account only the prefrontal cortex, and find a motivation
asymmetry score that you would calculate while extracting the data only from
the frontal electrodes. >> Pupil dilation can be caused by three different things.
It can be caused by changes in brightness, were we know that increased
brightness is related to pupil constriction. And changes in task difficulties,
such as doing a difficult task actually increases pupil dilation. And finally,
changes in emotional responses, so increased arousal for example is related to
increased pupil dilation. Recent technological advances allows us now to use
mobile EEG and mobile eye tracking to better understand how people are
performing and responding inside, for example, a store environment. We can
use mobile eye tracking to measure where people are looking. And we can use
mobile EEG to then assess how they are responding both emotionally and
cognitively. And by using this, we can better predict and understand what
works in a store environment, when people are stressed. But also how new
products and pricing, for example, is leading to changes in consumer
behaviour. >> So, the same principle as in the store, applies as in the lab. For
measuring different kind of neuro-reactions, we use the same EEG, and the
same EEG metrics. And we combine it with the eye tracking glasses. So,
instead of having a big computer in the store running after you, you have the
glasses walking with you. So now I've presented a few of the tools that can be
used to investigate the conscious and unconscious aspect of consumer
choices. And what is important to understand is that each tool can be used
separately and in the combination to each other to reach different kind of
goals. So the most important thing is to understand what you are searching
for, and then which kind of combination of the tools can help you to achieve
your goal. >> The motivation school is related to what we call approach and
avoidance behaviors, and it's based on something like 20 to 25 years of
scientific research. Basically what happens is that the frontal part of your
brain, the prefrontal cortex has an asymmetry to how it's engaged. When we
see a stronger activation of the left frontal cortex as opposed to the right
frontal cortex, we see that that is highly related to approach behaviors and
motivation. In opposition to that, stronger activation in the right frontal cortex
as opposed to the left frontal cortex seems to be related to avoidance
behaviors. With EEG you can measure a lot of different things. Here we can
focus on three different aspects. One, we can measure arousal. So that is very
much related to changes in pupil dilation, changes in respiration and pulse.
That is an indication of how relevant a person finds something. The second is
the, what we can call the cognitive load. So this is an index of how much
information people are processing at any one time. And finally we can measure
things like motivation, which is we can call a, an approach versus an avoidance
behavior. And that concludes this introduction to how we are using eye
tracking and what the signal means in understanding consumer attention, but
also how we are using EEG to understand emotional and cognitive responses
by measuring their brain responses. And how we are using these tools to
better understand consumer behavior both in stationary and lab settings, but
also in mobile settings such as in store environments.