Recent studies have demonstrated that the brain activity of a group of people can be used to forecast choices at the population level. In this study, we attempted to neuroforecast aggregate consumer behavior of Internet users. During our electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking study, participants were exposed to 10 banners that were also used in the real digital marketing campaign. In the separate online study, we additionally collected self-reported preferences for the same banners. We explored the relationship between the EEG, eye-tracking, and behavioral indexes obtained in our studies and the banners’ aggregate efficiency provided by the large food retailer based on the decisions of 291,301 Internet users. An EEG-based engagement index (central beta/alpha ratio) significantly correlated with the aggregate efficiency of banners. Furthermore, our multiple linear regression models showed that a combination of eye-tracking, EEG and behavioral measurements better explained the market-level efficiency of banner advertisements than each measurement alone. Overall, our results confirm that neural signals of a relatively small number of individuals can forecast aggregate behavior at the population level.

In this study, a relationship between the mood of news and the response of the oil and gas industry index of the Russian Federation was revealed. The empirical base of the study included 8.5 million news from foreign sources. Research methodology: fuzzy sets, naive Bayesian classifier, Pearson correlation coefficient. As a result of the research, it was discovered that: 1) negative news affects the stronger than the positive on the stock index; 2) news on companies affect the value of the index, and news on the industry affect the volume of trading; 3) the sanctions did not significantly affect the coverage of Russian oil and gas companies.

The effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on cognitive function are not always predictable based on the direction of the current and therefore remain widely debated. Contrary to the optimism of studies using transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) over the motor cortex, cognitive domain research demonstrates great ambiguity and diversity of stimulation-related effects. Here, we investigated such a controversial impact of tDCS over the posterior medial prefrontal cortex in a monetary incentive delay (MID) task with which one can study reward-based learning or reward processing a. We found that in tMID) task where subject anticipated small or big losses in different monetary contexts, cathodal stimulation suppressed plastic changes in sensory auditory P2 event-related potential and increased feedback-related negativity (FRN) implicated in reward-prediction error processing thus revealing multidirectional effect of tDCS in the same subject group performing the same experimental task. Our finding of multidirectionality of tDCS compromise the use of tES as a ready-to-use method to test brain causality in the neurocognitive events of high complexity such as decision-making.