Getting inside peoples' heads

Up till now, I'd come to the conclusion that I could safely ignore neuro-marketing. I didn't really like the sound of it so I was relieved when a cursory amount of reading revealed that people were struggling to get clear results. This seemed to be for two reasons: first, emotions seemed to be as complex and personal as I like to think they are; and, second, because there were all sorts of difficulties with the experimental kit.

FMRI [lie down inside a big white magnet] is fiendishly expensive, requires participents to be stationary, and only tells you the location of brain activity. Which, it turns out, is not a very good proxy for emotion. EEG [electrodes strapped to head], on the other hand, is a lot cheaper but can only read surface activity which looked to be too chaotic to interpret. All it could give you was an "aroused/not-aroused" reading which can help spot lies in police stations but is no good for telling the difference between "happy" and "sad".

Also, I read an annoying, somewhat boastful and not very rigorous book called Buyology by Martin Lindstrom - an account of "the most expensive neuro-marketing study ever undertaken". If that was the best the discipline could manage then I wasn't very impressed.

However, in the December issue of Wired there was an article that has made me reconsider things. A start up tech company, called Emotiv, has designed a cheap EEG headset that you can buy for c. $300. What's more though, they've finally figured out how to turn the chaotic readings into something intelligible. It doesn't just measure arousal, once it's been taught to recognise the way you think, it can tell the difference between at least four different emotions.

"While watching a trailer for a cartoon, Oschler tracks four basic emotions: happiness, sadness, fear and excitement. Then when the video ends, he recalls those emotions, and the trailer automatically rewinds to the moment when he felt that emotion the most strongly."

That seems to be a profoundly big deal. It means they're not just limited to measuring size and strength, they have made a step towards measuring how people feel - well, in the lab at least.

As the technology improves though, this could mean all sorts of minority report type developments - mind-reading-internet-dating, perhaps? But even before that happens it could make a massive difference to our understanding of the way people think.

At the moment, the only way we can find out about emotions is by asking people how they feel. Which, even if they're perfectly honest, means having to rely on their consciousness working out what just happened - a process that can obscure a lot of interesting detail.

For example, I'd love to find out whether someone's emotions change from the first moment they experience something to when they've had a second to think about it and culture's had time to get them to say the right thing...

Continuing to ignore my ethical concerns for the moment, this could get very exciting indeed.