How We Work

We can carry out our recordings in a normal room, and convene people as for traditional research - there are no medical procedures involved in what we do. Once at the venue, we explain the methodology to people and then fit them with a lightweight headset and visor. Inside this headset are sensors, simply small pieces of felt, through which we will pick up the tiny electrical signals naturally emitted by the brain.

Once the headsets are fitted we just tell people to sit back, relax and watch or listen to the communication we are interested in. We don't have to tell them to pay particular attention, as we are not relying on later questionnaire-filling and recall - rather we are interested in their immediate, pre-rationalised responses to what they are viewing.

Whilst people are watching the communication we are interested in, we pick up and record their brain responses. At this stage what we see is raw brain data, this is pooled before being turned into meaningful output for interpretation, so we don't see or report on individuals' brain responses. It's worth stressing at this point that we can't read minds - we are simply reporting on a series of responses!

We are able to interpret what our measured responses mean thanks to decades of work by neuroscientists around the world. Their work has shown that the brain is highly specialised, with particular physical regions clearly associated with specific cognitive functions. Advances in brain imaging have allowed neuroscientists to map these brain functions and there is now good understanding of where in the brain many important processes take place. Therefore, we can see, on a second by second basis, which of a number of key cognitive functions are active throughout a piece of communication.