From neural responses to population behavior: neural focus group predicts population-level media effects

Abstract

Can neural responses of a small group of individuals predict the behavior of large-scale populations? In this investigation, brain activations were recorded while smokers viewed three different television campaigns promoting the National Cancer Institute's telephone hotline to help smokers quit (1-800-QUIT-NOW). The smokers also provided self-report predictions of the campaigns' relative effectiveness. Population measures of the success of each campaign were computed by comparing call volume to 1-800-QUIT-NOW in the month before and the month after the launch of each campaign. This approach allowed us to directly compare the predictive value of self-reports with neural predictors of message effectiveness. Neural activity in a medial prefrontal region of interest, previously associated with individual behavior change, predicted the population response, whereas self-report judgments did not. This finding suggests a novel way of connecting neural signals to population responses that has not been previously demonstrated and provides information that may be difficult to obtain otherwise.

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1

Illustration of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) region of interest (ROI) and three measures of the effectiveness of the antismoking ad campaigns promoting the National Cancer Institute’s Smoking Quitline. The top panel (a) shows the MPFC ROI examined in the study; this region predicted individual behavior change in prior work (Falk, Berkman, Mann, Harrison, & Lieberman, 2010; Falk, Berkman, Whalen, & Lieberman, 2011). The graphs show (b) mean effectiveness ranking, (c) mean activity in the MPFC ROI, and (d) scaled percentage increase in call volume to the National Cancer Institute’s Smoking Quitline for the three ad campaigns. Error bars in (b) and (c) represent pooled standard errors of the mean. Error bars are not shown in (d) because these values represent population change and not a sample from that population.

Fig. 2

Proportion of cases in which responses produced the correct ordering of campaigns (C > B > A) as a function of measurement type. The measures used were activity in the primary region of interest (medial prefrontal cortex, or MPFC), self-reports (ranking of favorite ad campaigns, ranking of most effective ad campaign, and evaluation of each ad campaign on a 10-item scale), and activity in control regions of interest (visual cortex, motor cortex, right frontal eye fields, left frontal eye fields, and ventral striatum). The dashed line represents chance performance.