Neurobiometrics Specialist Now Scanning Thousands of Brains with Backing from Media, DoD

“Applying machine-learning AI to this and its other technologies, SPARK Neuro says it is continuously advancing its platform’s capability to measure attention and emotion as subjects are exposed to various media…”

Neuroanalytics startup SPARK Neuro is on the ascent, heralding a brave new world for marketing and brain biometrics.

The New York-based company, founded in 2017, essentially concerns itself with assessing how people react to media. To that end, it employs electroencephalography (“EEG”), galvanic skin response (GSR), face biometrics, and eye tracking, all enabling SPARK Neuro’s professionals to assess the physiological responses that subjects have to videos and other media they experience while being monitored.

The company raised $13.5 million in a series-A funding round last August, featuring investments from Thiel Capital, Will Smith, and Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company, and has now revealed that it used that capital to increase its ‘scientific development’ staff sevenfold, and to open a new office in Tokyo. Perhaps more importantly, SPARK Neuro has also added functional near-infrared spectroscopy, or “fNIRS”, to its toolkit. fNIRS are essentially portable fMRI machines, allowing SPARK Neuro’s researchers to look at which areas of a subject’s brain are being activated during analysis.

Applying machine-learning AI to this and its other technologies, SPARK Neuro says it is continuously advancing its platform’s capability to measure attention and emotion as subjects are exposed to various media, with thousands of brains now being scanned per month.

Going forward, SPARK Neuro is planning to open another new office in Europe and one in Washington, DC, with the latter scheduled to open on June 1st and to serve as a base for serving political clients ahead of the 2020 election. SPARK Neuro has also won a grant from the Department of Defense for R&D on counter-terrorism applications of its neuroanalytics technology. All of which suggests that SPARK Neuro could be one of the most important pioneers on the cutting-edge frontier of neurological biometrics.

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May 16, 2019 – by Alex Perala