Honoring Ada Lovelace Day and women in science
Today is the second annual Ada Lovelace Day, the day that bloggers post about the achievements of women in technology and science.
The day’s namesake honors the Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), the only (legitimate) child of Lord Byron, who was gunning for a “glorious boy.” (Ha! The “deaf tyranny of Fate,” indeed!) Ada is the author of the world’s first computer program, and the first description of a computer and of software. She makes Bill Gates look like a chump.
My choice for the modern day Ada is Rebecca Saxe, PhD, Assistant Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, and bigwig of Saxelab. Cognitive neuroscience is the study of the human brain in action (versus, say, sitting in a tray in a dissection lab). This is accomplished through neuro-imaging, or pictures and movies of the brain.
Rebecca first got attention as a graduate student when she discovered that a specific region of our brain activates when we try to read other people’s minds, i.e., try to understand what they are feeling or thinking. MIT Professor and Saxe’s PhD thesis advisor Nancy Kanwisher called Saxe’s finding “one of the most astonishing discoveries in the field of human cognitive neuroscience.”
Since then Rebecca and her Saxelab team continue to study how our brains think about other’s thoughts. What happens to the brain when we consider the motives, passions, and beliefs of others. What indeed! You can imagine this is of great interest to people in marketing. Perhaps, it is THE interest.
Saxe states that we marketing folk might be interested in her work for the wrong reason. We are easily beguiled by neuro-imaging, and that is not good. As neuromarketing takes off, there is a rush to “read minds” through neuro-imaging. As exciting as it is, the science is still very young, and important decisions should not be based on mere photos.
There is a better reason: to better understand and predict human behavior. Focus groups and interviews, standard marketing research tools for decades, have fallen short in explaining why people do what they do. Better to analyze and integrate neuroscience’s conclusions about human behavior with other marketing research. In this way, neuroscience becomes another tool in marketing’s toolbox. And arguably the most important one to come along in the past century.
You can catch more of Saxe on TED
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Knowing Brains with Rebecca Saxe
Honoring Ada Lovelace Day and women in science
The day’s namesake honors the Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852), the only (legitimate) child of Lord Byron, who was gunning for a “glorious boy.” (Ha! The “deaf tyranny of Fate,” indeed!) Ada is the author of the world’s first computer program, and the first description of a computer and of software. She makes Bill Gates look like a chump.
My choice for the modern day Ada is Rebecca Saxe, PhD, Assistant Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT, and bigwig of Saxelab. Cognitive neuroscience is the study of the human brain in action (versus, say, sitting in a tray in a dissection lab). This is accomplished through neuro-imaging, or pictures and movies of the brain.
Rebecca first got attention as a graduate student when she discovered that a specific region of our brain activates when we try to read other people’s minds, i.e., try to understand what they are feeling or thinking. MIT Professor and Saxe’s PhD thesis advisor Nancy Kanwisher called Saxe’s finding “one of the most astonishing discoveries in the field of human cognitive neuroscience.”
Since then Rebecca and her Saxelab team continue to study how our brains think about other’s thoughts. What happens to the brain when we consider the motives, passions, and beliefs of others. What indeed! You can imagine this is of great interest to people in marketing. Perhaps, it is THE interest.
Saxe states that we marketing folk might be interested in her work for the wrong reason. We are easily beguiled by neuro-imaging, and that is not good. As neuromarketing takes off, there is a rush to “read minds” through neuro-imaging. As exciting as it is, the science is still very young, and important decisions should not be based on mere photos.
There is a better reason: to better understand and predict human behavior. Focus groups and interviews, standard marketing research tools for decades, have fallen short in explaining why people do what they do. Better to analyze and integrate neuroscience’s conclusions about human behavior with other marketing research. In this way, neuroscience becomes another tool in marketing’s toolbox. And arguably the most important one to come along in the past century.
You can catch more of Saxe on TED