Summary of the project

We aim to realize a society where sensory stimulation enhances cooperation, trust, and altruism among people. By applying visual and auditory stimuli to gently activate brain reward and empathy systems, we will examine changes in cooperative behavior through small-scale and online experiments. Based on these findings, we aim to design and socially deploy a “passive mind-support technology” that can be used broadly in schools, communities, workplaces, and other everyday settings.

Milestone by year 2032

• Establish a method to design visual and auditory stimuli that induce brain activity related to reciprocal altruism using encoding models and generative AI, and propose generalized stimuli applicable without fMRI.
• Conduct PoC studies (100–200 participants, 1–2 sites) in schools, workplaces, or communities to evaluate improvements in cooperation, helping behavior, social participation, and subjective well-being, and develop ELSI guidelines (consent, transparency, privacy).

Milestone by year 2027

• Develop encoding models predicting brain activity to visual/auditory stimuli and prototype an optimal stimulus generation algorithm.
• Quantitatively verify the short-term effects of stimulus presentation on reciprocal altruism and cooperative behavior using behavioral tasks such as trust games.
• Quantitatively verify the short-term effects of stimulus presentation on reciprocal altruism and cooperative behavior using behavioral tasks such as trust games.

R&D theme progress reports

• [1] Modulation of psychological states via sensory stimulation
• [2] Modulation of psychological states via transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS)
• [3] Building a foundation for social implementation of psychological modulation technologies

Performers

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