Scientific
publications

This paper investigates the effects of video advertising in eliciting short-term changes in the strength of brand associations in both the target brand and the main competing brand. Using the «response latency task» defined by Till et al.(2011), the authors compared the strength of the associations related to a target brand and its main competitor before and after eighty participants viewed a video advertising the target brand. Findings suggest that advertising can reinforce brand associations of the target brand, enhancing their strength. Simultaneously, the same advertising also affects the competitor’s brand associations, but the effect is smaller.

Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) allows contactless monitoring of human cardiac activity through a video camera. In this study, we assessed the accuracy and precision for heart rate measurements of the only consumer product available on the market, namely the FacereaderTM rPPG by Noldus, with respect to a gold standard electrocardiograph. Twenty-four healthy participants were asked to sit in front of a computer screen and alternate two periods of rest with two stress tests (i.e. Go/No-Go task), while their heart rate was simultaneously acquired for 20 minutes using the ECG criterion measure and the FacereaderTM rPPG. Results show that the FacereaderTM rPPG tends to overestimate lower heart rates and underestimate higher heart rates compared to the ECG. The Facereader™ rPPG revealed a mean bias of 9.8 bpm, the 95% limits of agreement (LoA) ranged from almost -30 up to +50 bpm. These results suggest that whilst the rPPG FacereaderTM technology has potential for contactless heart rate monitoring, its predictions are inaccurate for higher heart rates, with unacceptable precision across the entire range, rendering its estimates unreliable for monitoring individuals.

Neuroaesthetics is a recent research area in cognitive neuroscience. This area focuses the attention on the aesthetic experience about beauty, in particular about visual art. Neuroscientific studies showed how the use of brain imaging techniques such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) can be efficiently applied to study the impact of this kind of experience. Although the scientific debate about explanations and understanding of brain systems involved in aesthetic experience elicited by visual artworks is still open, results show how the possibility to investigate this experience by means of neuroscientific methods is a promising field. In this framework, this research study presents additional empirical evidence supporting the possibility to further developing the application of neuroscientific techniques based on EEG synchronized with portable eye-tracking and galvanic skin responses while subjects are exposed to paintings “in vivo”, inside the museum where the paintings are exposed. Preliminary results confirm how portable solutions allow to measure aesthetics experience by means of neuroscientific methods combined with traditional ones based on interviews. The present research project is granted by “Banca Intesa San Paolo” from Italy.