Sophisticated headgear portrayed in science fiction movies is often used to translate or manipulate thoughts.
Although EmBand doesn’t manipulate the thoughts of the person wearing it, the device – designed by EmSense – does monitor the brainwaves of an individual watching commercials.
Primarily targeting marketing executives and market research firms, the EmBand focuses on two aspects of the viewer’s thoughts as they watch an advertisement: emotional response and cognitive engagement.
Emotional response can best be defined as how the viewer reacts to different aspects of an advertisement, while cognitive engagement is an analysis of how attentive the viewer is to the advertisement – which may be presented via television, print, product packaging, or the Internet.
Of course, few people would wear a gadget on their head on the pretext of having their brain waves measured unless there was some minimum level of assurance.
That is why EmSense has gone out of its way to attest to EmBand’s non-invasiveness, scalability and safety. In any case, all test subjects are voluntary and must consciously assent to participation.
EmSense was started by techies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Hewlett Packard in 2004. The firm has already tested over 100,000 volunteers in over 20 countries.
[Daily Mail]
