NeuroIS.org

In recent years, there has been an explosion in the abilities of neuroscience to study the functionality of the brain using neuroimaging tools. The field of cognitive neuroscience examines observable brain activities to identify the brain areas that underlie human functions and processes. Neuroimaging tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) can capture brain activation. These tools have led to a better understanding of how people make economic and social decisions, deal with risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity, respond to rewards and form utility, trust and distrust, cooperate or compete with others, predict others’ behaviors, and search for and process information. Social scientists, mostly in economics, psychology, and marketing, have teamed up with neuroscientists to examine a variety of social phenomena, and they have made notable advances in our understanding of decision making and human behavior.

Information systems (IS) research studies the development and use of information and communication technologies in organizations and society. In the past, IS researchers have typically relied on data from surveys, interviews, observation of behavior, archival sources, and simulation models. While these techniques have certainly advanced the IS discipline, recent discoveries in neuroimaging tools would enable IS researchers to obtain objective, reliable and unbiased measurements of thoughts, beliefs, and feelings and link them to specific human processes. While self-reported data are susceptible to common method, social desirability, and subjectivity biases, integrating traditional data with neuroimaging data gives the opportunity to triangulate multiple measurement methods and strengthen the robustness of data.

According to Dimoka, Pavlou, and Davis (2007, ICIS), cognitive neuroscience tools and theories can create opportunities in at least four areas in IS research:

1. identifying the neural bases involved in IS phenomena to complement existing data sources and help better understand, predict, and shape human behavior
2. improving and understanding the nature, localization, dimensionality, antecedents, and consequences of existing and new IS constructs
3. identifying potential differences between existing IS theories and constructs and their underlying brain mechanisms that would call for strengthening or even questioning existing IS theories, assumptions, and constructs
4. building superior IS theories with assumptions and constructs that better correspond to the brain’s functionality

Not only IS academics have been using cognitive neuroscience tools and theories. Also, the video gaming industry is using EEG-based headsets to observe the brain activations of people while playing games, and they use these activations to modify the gaming experience (Emotiv and Neurosky). Moreover, the world’s largest software company Microsoft has started a research program in the field of brain-computer interaction, illustrating the importance of cognitive neuroscience tools and theories for IS research.

Against this background, NeuroIS is an emerging subfield within the IS discipline that makes use of neuroimaging tools and theories to better understand the development and use of information and communication technologies in organizations and society.