• Ad Age, Monday, September 10, 2007 11:46 AM

Amid the many vagaries of marketing research, one thing is clear: Consumers lie. About what they want. About what they need. Sometimes they do it purposely. Most often they simply don't seem to realize what they're doing at all. A.K. Pradeep and his peers in the field of neuromarketing say they have the solution--electroencephalography, or EEG--machines that measure brain waves.

Pradeep claims that for the cost of a copy test, he'll give you back a number he calls the consumer's "propensity to purchase." He gets that by placing between 64 and 128 sensors on a consumer's skull to measure the electrical signals the brain produces every second while viewing ads.

But some neuroscientists are quick to raise questions about EEG. Brian Knutson, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Stanford University, likened the use of EEG to "standing outside a baseball stadium and listening to the crowd to figure out what happened." And leaders in traditional marketing research also remain skeptical.

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