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170. When Machine Learning Meets Neuroscience, with Ingrid Nieuwenhuis of Alpha.One

Sep 17, 2021

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A few weeks ago, I had the honor of being a speaker at Greenbook’s IIEX Behavior Conference, an amazing event that brings people together from around the world to talk about behavior and insights and so much more. My piece of this event was doing a live podcast interview with Dr. Ingrid Nieuwenhuis for the session called When Machine Learning Meets Neuroscience.

A couple of weeks ago, Sam Albert joined me to discuss AI and its role in behavioral science, and this conversation with Ingrid was so fantastic and really building on that. I was delighted when the team at Greenbook said I could share this conversation here with you on The Brainy Business. This is the exact audio from that conference, and if you want to see it in video form, it will be shared via my free global community, the BE Thoughtful Revolution when the episode airs.

Show Notes:

[00:06] In today’s episode I’m thrilled to introduce you to Dr. Ingrid Nieuwenhuis, head of science at Alpha.One.
[00:56] My piece at Greenbook’s IIEX Behavior Conference was a live podcast interview with Dr. Ingrid Nieuwenhuis for the session called When Machine Learning Meets Neuroscience.
[03:21] Ingrid shares about herself, her background in neuroscience, and what she does as head of science at Alpha.One. She is trained as a neuroscientist.
[05:03] After a whole academic career, she joined a start-up company where she used similar techniques to measure consumers’ responses. Then she moved to New York and worked with the marketing department at Facebook. After ten years, she moved back to the Netherlands and joined Alpha.One.
[07:49] Ingrid has done amazing work over her career.
[09:12] Expoze.io is a technique based on deep learning.
[09:54] Deep neural networks are networks that are based on the brain layers and instead of having to tell the network what the rules are. If you have a lot of data the network can figure out the rules itself. To train this network you need a lot of labeled data.
[11:16] When you have this big data set where you have all this labeled data, you can actually get the network to create a heat map that is very similar to reality.
[14:14] Branding is very important. In the long term, to build value you have to build your brand.
[15:14] Building a brand and being able to communicate your brand in your packaging and ads is so essential for successful marketing and branding in general.
[17:43] We are so wired for social interaction that our eyes are unconsciously drawn to faces and are attracted to them.
[18:43] With small changes, you can really change how something is drawing attention.
[19:48] They are currently building a product that is measuring brand value. They are focusing on getting measurements on brands.
[21:34] Contrast is going to draw our attention.
[23:02] There is always a balance between the story you want to tell, the emotion you want to create, and how you want to draw people in.
[24:00] If your story has to build up and there is no brand in the first few seconds it is almost a wasted impression.
[26:20] Really good creative agencies are able to integrate a brand into a story in a way that isn’t intrusive and the brand can really be the hero in the story.
[28:25] You have to really work to create multi-disciplinary teams.
[29:41] Statistics is an area that is so important and not always present in companies. So much of what we are currently doing is big data.
[30:37] Be open to multi-disciplinary teams and realize that it helps. When you take the time, really good things automatically emerge and it becomes very fulfilling and rewarding for everyone.
[32:38] There is so much we can learn from each other if we are just open to it.
[32:55] Having a diverse team is really important in making sure you can think about as much as possible before you launch.
[33:25] Often you need the input from all the areas to actually get it right.
[34:18] Melina shares her closing thoughts.
[35:35] Melina’s award-winning first book, What Your Customer Wants and Can’t Tell You is available on Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository, and Booktopia.

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