Neuromarketing is a multidisciplinary field of research whose aim is to investigate the consumers' reaction to advertisements from a neuroscientific perspective. In particular, the neuroscience field is thought to be able to reveal information about consumer preferences which are unobtainable through conventional methods, including submitting questionnaires to large samples of consumers or performing psychological personal or group interviews. In this scenario, we performed an experiment in order to investigate cognitive and emotional changes of cerebral activity evaluated by neurophysiologic indices during the observation of TV commercials. In particular, we recorded the electroencephalographic (EEG), galvanic skin response (GSR), and heart rate (HR) in a group of 28 healthy subjects during the observation of a series of TV advertisements that have been grouped by commercial categories. Comparisons of cerebral indices have been performed to highlight gender differences between commercial categories and scenes of interest of two specific commercials. Findings show how EEG methodologies, along with the measurements of autonomic variables, could be used to obtain hidden information to marketers not obtainable otherwise. Most importantly, it was suggested how these tools could help to analyse the perception of TV advertisements and differentiate their production according to the consumer's gender.

Driving tasks are vulnerable to the effects of sleep deprivation and mental fatigue, diminishing driver's ability to respond effectively to unusual or emergent situations. Physiological and brain activity analysis could help to understand how to provide useful feedback and alert signals to the drivers for avoiding car accidents. In this study we analyze the insurgence of mental fatigue or drowsiness during car driving in a simulated environment by using high resolution EEG techniques as well as neurophysiologic variables such as heart rate (HR) and eye blinks rate (EBR). Results suggest that it is possible to introduce a EEG-based cerebral workload index that it is sensitive to the mental efforts of the driver during drive tasks of different levels of difficulty. Workload index was based on the estimation of increase of EEG power spectra in the theta band over prefrontal areas and the simultaneous decrease of EEG power spectra over parietal areas in alpha band during difficult drive conditions. Such index could be used in a future to assess on-line the mental state of the driver during the drive task.

Nowadays there is the hope that neuroscientific findings will contribute to the improvement of building design in order to create environments which satisfy man's demands. This can be achieved through the understanding of neurophysiological correlates of architectural perception. To this aim, the electroencephalographic (EEG) signals of 12 healthy subjects were recorded during the perception of three immersive virtual reality environments (VEs). Afterwards, participants were asked to describe their experience in terms of Familiarity, Novelty, Comfort, Pleasantness, Arousal, and Presence using a rating scale from 1 to 9. These perceptual dimensions are hypothesized to influence the pattern of cerebral spectral activity, while Presence is used to assess the realism of the virtual stimulation. Hence, the collected scores were used to analyze the Power Spectral Density (PSD) of the EEG for each behavioral dimension in the theta, alpha and mu bands by means of time-frequency analysis and topographic statistical maps. Analysis of Presence resulted in the activation of the frontal-midline theta, indicating the involvement of sensorimotor integration mechanisms when subjects expressed to feel more present in the VEs. Similar patterns also characterized the experience of familiar and comfortable VEs. In addition, pleasant VEs increased the theta power across visuomotor circuits and activated the alpha band in areas devoted to visuospatial exploration and processing of categorical spatial relations. Finally, the de-synchronization of the mu rhythm described the perception of pleasant and comfortable VEs, showing the involvement of left motor areas and embodied mechanisms for environment appreciation. Overall, these results show the possibility to measure EEG correlates of architectural perception involving the cerebral circuits of sensorimotor integration, spatial navigation, and embodiment. These observations can help testing architectural hypotheses in order to design environments matching the changing needs of humans.