NeuroSpire of Durham has raised $618,000 from nine investors in a private stock offering, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission dated April 4.

Chief Executive Officer Jake Stauch, 26, dropped out of Duke in 2012 to focus on NeuroSpire. His startup helps marketing companies conduct their own brain scan-based marketing tests.

The concept is called neuromarketing.

What is neuromarketing?

Neuromarketing is market research enhanced with brain-imaging technology. NeuroSpire’s platform allows you to directly measure the brain’s electrical activity, uncovering deeper consumer insights than those afforded by traditional research methods.

Emotional Engagement

Our technology measures emotional approach and withdrawal motivations by analyzing asymmetrical EEG activity in the prefrontal cortex.

What does this mean for you? Wanting, liking, willingness-to-pay, and purchase intent are strongly correlated with increased emotional engagement scores.

Attention Activation

NeuroSpire measures the subconscious activation of visual attention processes by looking at EEG waveband patterns in the vision center of the occipital cortex.

When attention activation is high, consumers are more likely to notice, remember, and think about your marketing communications. Remember, there’s a the difference between looking and seeing.

Source: NeuroSpire

The filing lists Dan Gregerson, president of the venture capital firm Splashpond LLC, as a director of NeuroSpire.

Tatiana Birgisson, MATI energy drink company founder and CEO, is also listed as a director on the form. Durham-based MATI, which started as a Duke University dorm room brewing experiment, competes with Red Bull.

Stauch has been a director at MATI since its 2012 founding.

According to NeuroSpire’s website, the company offers a wireless and portable brain-wave recording toolkit that exports data to an analysis engine. Its solutions help its clients to directly measure the brain’s electrical activity, allowing users to peer into the subconscious mind of the consumer.

Durham-based ad agency McKinney, which counts Samsung and Sherwin-Williams among its clients, has signed up for NeuroSpire, according to Popular Science Magazine.

Stauch, a Charleston native who scored a perfect 2400 on his SAT while fighting bronchitis in high school, announced in 2014 that Capital A Partners of Charleston, S.C., had participated in a Series A investment round, specifically to fund the application of NeuroSpire to treat children struggling with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Companies relying on a Reg D exemption do not have to register their offering of securities with the SEC, but they must file what’s known as a Form D electronically with the SEC after they first sell their securities.

The company now has four employees, according to its LinkedIn website.

Note: This story is from the North Carolina Business News Wire, a service of UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Media and Journalism