Center For Digital Democracy. Commercial Alert. Nader group slams Emory for brain research - Atlanta Business Chronicle. A national watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader is asking Emory University to stop a controversial research project or risk losing millions in federal funding. The organization, Commercial Alert, made the request in a Dec. 1 letter to Emory's president, James Wagner. Commercial Alert objects to Emory allowing BrightHouse, an Atlanta marketing consultancy headed by veteran advertising executive Joey Reiman, to use the university's neuroscience facilities for "neuromarketing" research. Neuromarketing research uses a magnetic resonance imaging machine, or MRI, to determine which parts of the brain react to different types of advertising in an effort to help marketers develop more effective marketing techniques for selling their products or services.
The emerging field of study has raised questions of medical ethics among some scientists and university professors. "It is wrong to use medical research for marketing instead of healing," Ruskin said. Other actions. Thought Police: How Brain Scans Could Invade Your Private Life. October 15, 2007 12:00 AM Frank Tong is peering into another man's mind. The Vanderbilt University neuroscientist is sitting in front of a bank of monitors inside a dimly lit room. On the other side of a plate-glass window, an undergraduate lies immobile, his legs protruding from a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. A display unit above the young man's eyes flashes a picture of a pigeon or a penguin--at this point Tong doesn't know which. A low roaring reverberates through the room as the scanner sends powerful waves of magnetic energy cascading through the subject's cranium.
On Tong's screens a series of images appear: black-and-white cross sections of the living brain, with small fluctuations in brightness that indicate regions of increased activity. It's as if Tong has removed one small brick in the wall between the outside world and our inner lives. The underlying technology involved in functional magnetic resonance imaging has been around for decades. The Latest in Consumer Brainwashing--Neuromarketing. Commercial Alert Asks Emory University to Halt Neuromarketing Experiments < WASHINGTON - December 1 - Commercial Alert and prominent psychology experts sent a letter today to Emory University President James Wagner, requesting that Emory stop conducting neuromarketing experiments. These medical experiments on human subjects are unethical because they will likely be used to promote disease and human suffering. If Emory University is found to have violated federal ethics rules regarding experiments on human subjects, it may lose its federal research funding.
Neuromarketing is a controversial new field of marketing which uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) a medical technology -- not to heal, but to sell products. The BrightHouse Institute¹s neuromarketing experiments are conducted in the neuroscience wing of the Emory University Hospital. The letter to Emory University President James Wagner follows. Dear Mr. Dr. Dr. Sincerely,