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We report the findings from a study exploring the experiences of individuals undergoing MRI scanning for research. Semi‐structured interviews took place before and after scanning with 17 participants; 12 were healthy volunteers and five were patients with a diagnosis of remitted depression. Themes of apprehension and curiosity prior to scanning were common in both groups. Patients were often confused about the procedure. Negative feelings were an issue at the outset, characterised by shock related to the physical surroundings, after which positive feelings, for example relaxation, were often experienced, and in the case of patients, learning more about their brain. Written information about imaging was deemed satisfactory; however the ability to ‘experience’ aspects of scanning beforehand was suggested. Scanning may be viewed as a process beginning prior to the procedure itself and involving positive and negative emotions. Increased information, reassurance and a more interactive intervention to reduce anxiety may be beneficial and may improve individuals' experience of this widely used procedure.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the methodology of several brain imaging techniques and in particular, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and its potential implications for market research. The aim is to enable the reader both to understand this emerging methodology and to conduct independent research in the area.

A short introduction on current neuroimaging methods used in behavioral neuroscience is provided by means of a literature review. The ensuing discussion focuses on fMRI as the currently most popular neuroimaging technique. Having described the fMRI methodology, an outline of the analysis of functional neuroimaging data follows, after which there is a discussion of some key research issues.

Although in its infancy, fMRI seems to be a useful and promising tool for market researchers. Initial studies in the field reveal that fMRI is able to shed light on subconscious processes such as affective aspects of consumer behavior.

Because brand positioning, advertising strategies and even pricing strategies are often based on constructs such as emotions, neuropsychological findings and methods should have important implications for practitioners in the field of brand management and advertising. Nonetheless, far more basic research is needed before fMRI can be adopted for marketing practice.

This paper is one of the first in the marketing literature to provide a methodological overview of fMRI and discuss the potential implications for marketing research.

This paper aims to explore brain-based differences in national and own-label brands perceptions. Because price is a differentiating characteristic, able to discriminate between national and own-label brands, its influence is also studied.

The study uses the Save Holdings Or Purchase (SHOP) task with functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the differences in brain functioning for national versus own-label branded products.

For the same product, the higher priced national brands and the lower priced own-label brands lead to more buying decisions. It is also found that there are brain structures that are more active/deactive for national than for own-label brands, both marked with real market prices. Price is a powerful driver of buying decisions and has its neural correlates. Parietal regions activate when brand information is subtracted from brand-plus-price information. The most surprising finding is that visual and visual associative areas are involved in the contrasts between branded products marked with switched prices and marked with real market prices.

The activation/deactivation brain patterns suggest that accepted models of brain functioning are not suitable for explaining brand decisions. Also, to our knowledge, this is the first time that a study directly addresses the brain’s functioning when subjects are stimulated with national versus own-label brands. It paves the way for a new approach to understanding how such brand categories are perceived, revealing the neural origins of the associated psychological processes.

To describe the utility of three of the main cognitive neuroscientific techniques currently in use within the neuroscience community, and how they can be applied to the emerging field of neuromarket research.

A brief development of functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography and transcranial magnetic stimulation are described, as the core principles are behind their respective use. Examples of actual data from each of the brain imaging techniques are provided to assist the neuromarketer with subsequent data for interpretation. Finally, to ensure the neuromarketer has an understanding of the experience of neuroimaging, qualitative data from a questionnaire exploring attitudes about neuroimaging techniques are included which summarize participants' experiences of having a brain scan.

Cognitive neuroscientific techniques have great utility in market research and can provide more “honest” indicators of consumer preference where traditional methods such as focus groups can be unreliable. These techniques come with complementary strengths which allow the market researcher to converge onto a specific research question. In general, participants considered brain imaging techniques to be relatively safe. However, care is urged to ensure that participants are positioned correctly in the scanner as incorrect positioning is a stressful factor during an imaging procedure that can impact data quality.

This paper is an important and comprehensive resource to the market researcher who wishes to use cognitive neuroscientific techniques.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been studied as a neurodevelopmental disorder since Leo Kanner's early observations of abnormal head circumference in autistic children. In the past few years, there has been much progress made in elucidating the anatomical and functional abnormalities in ASD. This paper aims to summarise the extant research.

This paper provides a summary of relevant research findings in the neuroimaging of autism for the past 12 month period. Papers were identified using the Medline search terms: autism; ASD (functional); magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); neuroimaging; diffusion tensor imaging (DTI); and endophenotype.

Relatively recent techniques such as functional MRI and DTI have furthered the initial work derived from early histological and structural imaging studies. Even newer techniques, such as DTI tractography and support vector machine analysis, and other computer‐based learning methods have allowed us to move beyond regional variations in grey and white matter volume and study ASD as a disorder of connectivity, and of regional cerebral function and neural circuitry. Brain regions and neural circuits that are implicated in the core symptoms of ASD (deficits in social reciprocity, language and communication, and restricted and stereotyped interests) have been repeatedly shown to be abnormal in those individuals.

This paper aims to provide a background for clinicians to the current research and focuses on developments in the field of neuroimaging of ASD from the past year, which have generated further insights into the neurobiology of ASD.

Since Islamic markets are growing substantially, there is an urgent need to gain a better understanding of how Muslim consumers perceive products from a religious perspective. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the brain responses of Muslim consumers to Halal and non-Halal products using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology.

The research model is a simplified version of the theory of planned behavior. The initial experiment began by asking participants to divide a set of images into two groups: Halal and non-Halal products. The fMRI experiment uses a blocked design approach to capture brain activities resulting from presenting the two groups of images to participants, and to record the strength of their attitudes toward purchasing the products.

Across all participants, the level of brain activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex increased significantly when Halal images were presented to them. The same results emerged when the Halal images showed raw and cooked meat. The variations in the results may be due to the high emotional sensitivity of Muslim consumers to using religious products.

This study uses a unique approach to monitor brain activity to confirm that consumers from specific market segments respond differently to market products based on their internal beliefs. Findings from this study provide evidence that marketing managers targeting Muslim markets should consider the sensitivity of presenting products in ways that reflect religious principles, in order to gain higher acceptance in this market segment.

Although the literature reports considerable research on Muslim consumers’ behavior, most of the previous studies utilize conventional data collection approaches to target broad segments of consumers by using traditional products. This paper is the first to track the reactions of the Muslim consumer segment to specific types of market products.

Gliomas are common intracranial tumors with the characteristic of diffuse and invasive growth. The prognosis is poor, and the recurrence rate and mortality are higher. With the development of big data technology, many methods such as natural language processing, computer vision and image processing have been deeply applied in the medical field. This can help clinicians to provide personalized and precise diagnosis and therapeutic schedule for patients with different type of gliomas to achieve the best therapeutic effect. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and extract useful information from published research results by conducting a secondary analysis of the literature.

The PubMed and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) literature database were used to retrieve published Chinese and English research papers about human gliomas. Comprehensive analysis was applied to conduct this research. The factors affecting survival and prognosis were screened and analyzed respectively in this paper, and different methods for multidimensional data of patients were discussed.

This paper identified biomarkers and therapeutic modalities associated with prognosis for different grade of gliomas. This paper investigated the relationship among these clinical prognostic factors and different histopathologic tying and grade of gliomas by comprehensive analysis. This paper summarizes the research progress of biomarker in medical imaging and genomics of gliomas to improve prognosis and the current status of treatment in China.

Combined with multimodal data such as genomics data, medical image data and clinical information data, this paper comprehensively analyzed the prognostic factors of glioma and provided guidance and evidence for rational treatment planning and improvement of clinical treatment prognosis.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of destination images on tourists’ behavioral intention to select a destination for their next vacation. Most of previous studies investigated this relationship by interacting with tourists during their stay in the destination. However, this research examines the impact of destination images before tourists visit a destination, using functional technological-oriented magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach to track brain activation during the decision to select a destination.

The proposed model is adopted from the theory of planned behavior. Study participants divide a set of hotel destination images into two groups: attractive and non-attractive destination images. A blocked design experiment was used during fMRI scan to track brain activities resulting from presenting the two groups of images to participants, and record the strength of their intention to visit the attractive destination.

The level of brain activation at the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) increased when participants were asked to assess the attractive destination images compared with the level of activation for non-attractive ones. Also, the positive attitude toward an attractive destination led to higher intention to visit that destination.

This study enhances the authors’ understanding of how tourists analyze destination images to reach a decision on future action. It can also be used to help destination managers define an advertisement strategy that makes their destination more attractive.

Although the literature reports considerable research on destination image and its influence on tourists intention, this is the first exploratory study to use the fMRI technology to investigate tourists’ attitude toward destination images.

This study aims to illuminate the contribution of neurophysiological techniques in the field of marketing and consumer decision-making and to highlight avenues and research questions that marketing researchers can take advantage of from neuroscience and psychology to inform marketing phenomena.

The authors first reviewed the roots and definition of consumer neuroscience. Then, the authors outlined the main characteristics of the most commonly used neurophysiological tools (namely, skin conductance, facial electromyography, electrocardiogram, eye-tracking, electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, magnetoencephalography and transcranial magnetic stimulation) with a special emphasis on their advantages and weaknesses. Finally, the authors propose the development of research lines that could be implemented by marketing researchers with an appropriate application and understanding of tools and theories of neuroscience and psychology.

The authors propose research questions to be addressed within four thematic areas: opportunities in product decisions (predicting product purchasing decisions, consumer responses to branding efforts and packaging), pricing, communication and retailing scenarios. The authors also incorporate insights into the complementarity of neurophysiological tools to traditional ones and situations in which these tools are useful for enhancing marketing theory. The authors finally shed light on the moral–ethical criticisms of this new branch of marketing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research constitutes the first study in identifying the research opportunities that marketing researchers could take advantage from neuroimaging and physiological tools to inform marketing theory and practice.

Esta investigación tiene como objetivo esclarecer la contribución de las técnicas neurofisiológicas en el campo del marketing y la toma de decisiones de los consumidores y destacar las vías y preguntas de investigación que los investigadores de marketing pueden aprovechar de la neurociencia y la psicología para informar sobre los fenómenos del marketing.

En primer lugar, revisamos el origen y la definición de la neurociencia del consumidor. A continuación, esbozamos las principales características de las herramientas neurofisiológicas más utilizadas (a saber, la conductancia, la electromiografía facial, el electrocardiograma, el seguimiento ocular, la electroencefalografía, la resonancia magnética funcional, la espectroscopia funcional en el infrarrojo cercano, la magnetoencefalografía y la estimulación magnética transcraneal), haciendo especial hincapié en sus ventajas y debilidades. Finalmente, se propone el desarrollo de líneas de investigación que podrían ser implementadas por los investigadores de marketing con una adecuada aplicación y comprensión de las herramientas y teorías de la neurociencia y la psicología.

Proponemos preguntas de investigación para ser abordadas dentro de cuatro áreas temáticas: oportunidades en las decisiones de producto (predicción de las decisiones de compra de productos, respuestas de los consumidores a los esfuerzos de marca y envasado), precios, comunicación y distribución. También incorporamos ideas sobre la complementariedad de las herramientas neurofisiológicas con las tradicionales y las situaciones en las que estas herramientas son útiles para mejorar la teoría del marketing. Por último, arrojamos luz sobre las críticas ético-morales a esta nueva rama del marketing.

本研究旨在阐明神经生理学技术在营销和消费者决策领域的贡献, 并强调营销研究人员可以从神经科学和心理学中利用的途径和研究问题, 以告知营销现象。

我们首先回顾了消费者神经科学的根基和定义。然后, 我们概述了最常用的神经生理学工具（即皮肤电导率、面部肌电图、心电图、眼球追踪、脑电图、功能性磁共振成像、功能性近红外光谱、脑磁图和经颅磁刺激）的主要特点, 特别强调了它们的优势和劣势。最后, 我们提出了研究路线的发展, 这些路线可以由营销研究人员通过适当的应用和理解神经科学和心理学的工具和理论来实施。

我们提出了四个主题领域的研究问题：产品决策中的机会（预测产品购买决策、消费者对品牌推广工作的反应和包装）、定价、沟通和零售场景。我们还纳入了对神经生理学工具与传统工具的互补性的见解, 以及这些工具对加强营销理论有用的情况。最后, 我们对这个新的营销分支的道德伦理批评进行了说明。

纸张类型 – 研究论文

The purpose of this paper is to review recent applications of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other neuroimaging techniques in marketing and advertising, and to present some methodological and statistical considerations that should be taken into consideration when applying fMRI to study consumers’ cognitive behavior related to marketing phenomena.

A critical approach to investigate three methodological issues related to fMRI applications in marketing is adopted. These issues deal mainly with brain activation regions, event-related fMRI and signal-to-noise ratio. Statistical issues related to fMRI data pre-processing, analyzing and reporting are also investigated.

Neuroimaging cognitive techniques have great potential in marketing and advertising. This is because, unlike conventional marketing research methods, neuroimaging data are much less susceptible to social desirability and “interviewer’s” effect. Thus, it is expected that using neuroimaging methods to investigate which areas in a consumer’s brain are activated in response to a specific marketing stimulus can provide a much more honest indicator of their cognition compared to traditional marketing research tools such as focus groups and questionnaires.

By merging disparate fields, such as marketing, neuroscience and cognitive psychology, this research presents a comprehensive critical review of how neuroscientific methods can be used to test existing marketing theories.