The Projects

We are on the cusp of a new revolution in intelligence that affects every aspect of our lives from work and relationships, to our childhood, education, and old age. Working Memory, the ability to remember and mentally process information, is so important that without it we could not function as a society or as individuals.

People with superior working memory tend to have better jobs, better relationships, and more happy and fulfilling lives. People with poor working memory struggle in their work, their personal lives, and are more likely to experience trouble with the law.

More recently, a growing number of studies demonstrate that working memory is also important for our mental health. In a recent study conducted with 20-year-olds, Dr Tracy Packiam Alloway from the University of Stirling who is leading our online survey into working memory found that people who view the glass as half-empty but have good working memory are less likely to suffer depression compared to those who view the glass as half-empty and have low working memory. So while we may think that seeing the glass as half-empty, having good working memory acts like a buffer to protect our mental health. 

In the memory test, we want you to help us investigate this theory further and provide a robust set of data to further the research in this area.

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Once you’ve tested your memory you can tell us what you think about advertising.

As the saying goes; ‘I know half the money that I spend on advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half’.

Huge amounts are spent on advertising each year, yet we have surprisingly little concrete information about exactly what features of advertising influence individual behaviour, and more importantly, how.

So the big question is; does advertising simply provide information to the individual to allow them to make up their own mind, or can the advertiser help this process along?

ADLAB is designed to give up some information on this question which goes far beyond what we think we know now about advertising in many ways.

It is a short and simple experiment designed to compare different types of advertisement, and their influence on our attitudes and behaviours.

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You can find out the results from neuromantics.com at the
British Science Festival in September.

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