from the did-he-fire-six-shots-or-only-five? dept.
The City College of New York report on predicting audience preferences by analysing brainwaves (open access journal article):
By analyzing the brainwaves of 16 individuals as they watched mainstream television content, researchers were able to accurately predict the preferences of large TV audiences, up to 90% in the case of Super Bowl commercials.
"Alternative methods, such as self-reports are fraught with problems as people conform their responses to their own values and expectations," said Dr. Jacek Dmochowski, lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at City College during the research. However, brain signals measured using electroencephalography (EEG) can, in principle, alleviate this shortcoming by providing immediate physiological responses immune to such self-biasing. "Our findings show that these immediate responses are in fact closely tied to the subsequent behavior of the general population," he added.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Sunday August 03 2014, @01:48PM
(Insert joke about fox news and flat line brainwaves here) Just to get it out of the way.
The whole story has a peculiar inherent dualism stance. Should be expected that if your mind / soul is nothing more than brain waves, then detailed enough analysis of brainwaves should be well correlated with thoughts. On the other hand if you're stuck in dualist brain/soul land, then it should be shocking that coincidentally it just randomly happens that brainwaves have any correlation with thoughts.
(Score: 2) by randmcnatt on Sunday August 03 2014, @01:51PM
The Wright brothers were not the first to fly: they were the first to land.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @09:23AM
That's how the population will get the chip in the head. Mark my words.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Horse With Stripes on Sunday August 03 2014, @03:13PM
Audience Preferences: leave me and my brainwaves alone FFS!
(Score: 1) by panachocala on Sunday August 03 2014, @06:39PM
Because that's what it's all about... feeding the cattle.
I'm sure Van Gogh, Shakespeare, Bach, etc. were just smart enough to know what their audiences wanted. This new technology will surely be a hit with the audiences.