Our brains are powerful—but secretive—forecasters of video virality - by Stanford University
Stanford University neuroscientist Brian Knutson and colleagues are investigating an approach he calls "neuroforecasting"—in which they use brain data from individuals who are in the process of making decisions to forecast how larger groups of unrelated people will respond to the same choices.
His lab's latest neuroforecasting work in collaboration with researchers at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, published Mar. 9 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on how people spend time watching videos online. By scanning people's brains as they selected and watched videos, the researchers discovered that both neural and behavioral responses to a video could forecast how long other people will watch that same video on the internet. When forecasting video popularity on the internet, however, brain responses were the only measure that mattered.
Neuro-forecasting internet market success - talk by Brian Knutson