fMRI

Specific brain areas involved in loyalty, liking, relevance, empathy and reward

Measures changes in oxygenated blood flow, which is related to neural activity (neurons require oxygenated blood to fire, which increases blood flow to the active area). This can reveal what brain regions are more active during a particular task or experience.

Respondents lay in a large oval-shaped magnet while brain images are taken every two to three seconds.

  • Best spatial 3-D mapping of normal brain activity.
  • Can be used to validate other measures.
  • Difficult to scale: lab or clinic-based, very costly and highly specialized.
  • Low temporal resolution: activity is averaged over several seconds.
  • Noisy, unnatural consumer experience.
  • Difficult to infer a particular mental process based on just observing activity in a brain region.

Studies for which moment-by-moment responses and triggers are not required, validation studies.