Designing Systems for Cognitive Augmentation

​ Recent advances in visual decoding have demonstrated the feasibility of classifying and reconstructing perceived images from evoked …

There are currently  UROP openings for this project. Humans navigate an overwhelming amount of information flow daily,  part…

​Learning robust audio representations currently demands extensive datasets of real-world sound recordings. By applying artificial transfor…

​OceanChat: The Effect of Virtual Conversational AI Agents on Sustainable Attitude and Behavior ChangeMarine ecosystems face unprecede…

People use AI chatbots like ChatGPT in many ways—asking questions, sparking creativity, solving problems, and even for personal interaction…

People often find it difficult to turn their intentions into real actions—a challenge that affects both personal growth and mental wellbein…

In an era where loneliness has been declared an epidemic by the U.S. Surgeon General, older adults face particular vulnerability to social …

Pat Pataranutaporn, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USANattavudh Powdthavee, Nanyang Technological Universi…

NeuroChat is a neuroadaptive AI tutor that combines generative AI with real-time EEG data to create a personalized, dynamic learning experi…

In the contemporary media landscape dominated by discourse surrounding AI-generated content, this project inverts the paradigm by examining…

Assessing and understanding operationally-relevant performance is key to helping ensure safety in complex, dynamic environments. Two curren…

The application of generative AI in physical design presents a novel research area, as these technologies have primarily been utilized for …

ConceptualTales uses generative AI to explain concepts through fiction-inspired analogies. Education, particularly in STEM and social …

AI interfaces have evolved, yet they remain largely confined to chat and voice. Gamification offers a new avenue for research and education…

This study explores the effects on your brain of using LLMs like ChatGPT in everyday tasks. Brain activity of 55 students aged 18-25 was re…

A rapidly growing number of studies demonstrate the potential benefits of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) in a wide range of use…

This paper introduces WatchThis, a novel wearable device that enables natural language interactions with real-world objects and environment…

People inherently use experiences of their past while imagining their future, a capability that plays a crucial role in mental health. …

The rapid advancement of Generative AI (GenAI) technologies presents new opportunities to support daily living for older adults. This proje…

Emotions, shaped by past experiences, significantly influence decision-making and goal pursuit. Traditional cognitive-behavioral techniques…

Conversational AI Powered by Large Language Models Amplifies False Memories in Witness InterviewsThis study examines the impact of AI on hu…

We propose a computational approach to preserve traditional dance as living cultural heritage, exploring the use of technology to capture k…

The Machine Ghost in the Human Shell by Kawita Vatanajyankur and Pat Pataranutaporn is set to premier at the 11th Asia Pacific Tr…

This research aims to address the timely and timeless challenge of human-computer interaction by focusing on designing and studying human-A…

Advances in machine learning have recently enabled the synthesis of text, images, audio and video data, in what is referred to as Generativ…

The project aims to develop a programmable smart patch for delivering substances, that could improve cognition (e.g., caffeine, the in…

As computing blends into everyday environments, powerful opportunities open up for social connection. How can we leverage technology to enh…

Society is experiencing a growing challenge of mental health and wellbeing. This year, 32.3% of U.S. adults or over 100 million individuals…

SleepSoundly is smart pillow case interface that aims to improve sleep quality by stimulating the brain during deep sleep.We are studying i…

We present Large Language Model for Mixed Reality (LLMR), a framework for the real-time creation and modification of interactive Mixed Real…

Loneliness is a growing and global issue that affects approximately a third of individuals in industrialized countries. Given the…

MeMicWearables that record audio all the time pose privacy concerns. We want to allow the myriad use cases these wearables allow without th…

An LLM-enabled system that integrates physiological data from wearables and contextual information to offer personalized, real-time health …

 Enhancing Apple Vision Pro headset with brain sensing capabilities via non-invasive brain sensing (Electroencephalography - EEG)…

Very few research works featuring AR and Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) systems considered integrating cognitive state of the user in their…

AbstractDespite significant historical progress, discrimination and social stigma continue to impact the lives of LGBTQIA+ individuals. The…

Evolving Cultural Heritage through Collaborative Choreography with Generative Virtual CharactersThis project introduces an approach for tra…

This work was presented  at  the ACM CHI 2023 conference. By Joanne Leong, Florian Perteneder, Muhender Raj Rajvee, and…

We are currently in an AI revolution. Big AI models are writing entire books, and generating art sold worth millions. Soon content made fro…

🥵 Reconstruction of perceived images from the brain is currently a hot topic in brain imaging space. 💸💸💸 However, previous approaches have …

We're living in an aging society with cognitive loss placing stress on caregivers to monitor older adults struggling with memory decline.&n…

​People have to remember an ever-expanding volume of information. To help with this, we developed Memoro, a wearable and audio-based person…

Fostering students' interests in learning is considered to have many positive downstream effects. Large language models have opened up new …

We demonstrate a multimodal approach for perceptual learning that supplements a perceptually-ambiguous audio stimulus with haptics. In our …

Be My Guest! is currently on display at the Vantaa Art Museum, Finland until December 3, 2023 as part of their "SYSTEMS" exhibition.At the …

Critical thinking is an essential human skill. Despite the importance of critical thinking, research reveals that our reasoning ability suf…

 NeuraLiminal: Choose Your Reality
NeuraLiminal is an immersive art exhibition that celebrates the union between human and machine, sh…

​The Ddog project features a Spot robot from Boston Dynamics and a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) system powered by AttentivU, a pair of wi…

InExChange is comprised of a series of research studies and mixed-reality experienced designed to explore the impacts of shared physical se…

AbstractAs conversational agents powered by large language models become more human-like, users are starting to view them as companions rat…

What if you could go back in time to your childhood homes? Or what if you could revisit an old vacation spot that you once visited? Or even…

Fostering students’ interest in learning has many positive downstream effects. It can make students more persistent and impact student…

Specifically crafted sensory stimulation can influence brain function and potentially improve cognition. In this project, we developed soft…

Generating customized, memorable visuals and stories to support memory. Mnemonics are strategies used to remember information better (…

With the expansion of intelligent and ubiquitous computers everywhere, we have in many ways become cognitive cyborgs: most of us are insepa…

We present a novel video compression pipeline, called Txt2Vid, which dramatically reduces data transmission rates by compressing webcam vid…

Electrical stimulation has long been used in medicine to induce phosphenes, or visual sensations, in patients with visual impairments. Rece…

While some Human-Computer Integration (HInt) systems have successfully demonstrated that humans and technology can be physically and functi…

In collaboration with the Lurie Center for Autism, Massachusetts General Hospital, and MIT Lincoln Lab, the aim is to study, characterize a…

Sleep++ aims to improve sleep quality by stimulating the brain to enter deep sleep. Currently, insufficient and poor quality sleep represen…

​Say hello to FutureYou!Imagine stepping into a time machine and having a conversation with your future self. What would you ask? What unex…

SleepStim is a framework for automatically recording sleep physiology  and presenting sensory stimuli in sleep, using consumer smartph…

Dive is a project to explore and induce lucid dreams using mobile devices.Lucid dreams are dreams in which  you are aware that you're …

CyberBiome is a programmable bio-digital organ, a wearable biosynthesis platform for personalized, on-demand production of therapeutics and…

Tap To Remember is a wearable memory prosthesis.  We are testing whether laboratory techniques for enhancing memory—such as targeted m…

​Mental Machine: Labour in the Self Economy, 2022, is a live performance by Kawita Vatanajyankur made in collaboration with Pat Patara…

The sense of smell is perhaps the most pervasive of all senses, but it is also one of the least understood and least exploited in HCI. We p…

​A Conversation with the Sun is an artistic exploration by acclaimed Thai auteur and artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul in collaboration…

The KALM project consists of a multimodal dataset and a wearable system for managing anxiety.  With this set of tools we aim to make n…

There are currently  UROP openings for this project. Website of the project: https://www.neurafutures.com NeuraFutures …

We explore how AI-systems can effectively assist human reasoning processes by building and evaluating combined human+AI information process…

ACM CHI 2025 · Research PublicationApril 2025In a randomized controlled trial study, “Deceptive Explanations by Large Language Models …

This project was produced as part of the   2021 Snap Creative Challenge, focused on "The Future of Co-located Social AR."Wem…

The "dream" has historically been conceived in the West as internal, entirely private, impossibly personal. This is at odds with much of th…

Perceptual illusions have the power to change our abilities and behaviours. Prior research in virtual reality (VR) has shown that transport…

In collaboration with NTT DATAEvery human culture has developed practices and rituals associated with remembering those who have died. We a…

This research presents the results of a study with 134 participants to explore the effects of learning from an AI-generated virtual in…

Advancements in machine learning have recently enabled the hyper-realistic synthesis of prose, images, audio and video data, in what is ref…

Using affective signals to summarize 16 hours of body-cam video into 15 minutes of daily recap. See the video below.

EEG-based biometrics (user identification) has been explored on small datasets of no more than 157 subjects. Here we show that the accuracy…

The human body produces a variety of different electrophysiological signals from brain-waves (EEG) to the electrical activity of the heart …

This project was selected to represent MIT at the Microsoft Design Expo 2020 on ‘Healthier Futures.’ iNonymizeA tele-mental health pla…

​The environmental conditions of prolonged spaceflight pose significant psychological risks for astronauts. In particular, crews of future …

The Brain Switch is a real-time, closed-loop brain-computer system allowing for real-time correspondence of simple user needs to a caretake…

​There are currently  UROP openings for this project. AttentivU is a neural AI platform for wireless non-invasive sensing of pers…

“Us” aims to help people develop their sense of empathy. It uses machine learning to analyze interlocutors’ signals (e.g., choice of words,…

EmbER (Embodied Experience Remotely) explores the use of wearable sensory devices, communicating nonverbal signals, as an additional commun…

Skip Norm is a new and flexible building block for Deep Learning that serves as a skip connection and normalization block simultaneously. I…

 dementAI is an open-source platform for modeling risk stratification of Alzheimer's dementia using spontaneous speech through a …

In this project we propose a prototype which combines an existing AR headset Hololens 2 with a Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) system based…

mood.mic is a privacy-preserving tool for monitoring bipolar disorder.  It allows users to track their moods by telling a story about …

Targeted dream incubation (TDI) is a methodology for guiding (or “incubating”) dreams towards specific themes. Please read the FAQ below to…

Sunny is a Facebook messenger chatbot by Monique Davey, Jaya Narain, and Tina Quach that promotes wellbeing by strengthening connections wi…

A wearable olfactory display that monitors cardio-respiratory information with the aspiration to support mental wellbeing.BioEssence is a w…

Wearable Reasoner: Towards Enhanced Human Rationality through a Wearable AI AssistantWe present "Wearable Reasoner," a proof-of-concep…

Wearable Wisdom: An Intelligent Audio-Based System for Mediating Wisdom and AdviceHaving good mentors and role models is important for pers…

We envision that a close-to-nose interface could be used as a complementary or alternative wearable method to nasal cannulas or masks,…

Living in space could have significant physical and mental impacts on astronauts. Wearables have the potential to play a critical role in m…

Living Bits : Opportunities and Challenges for Integrating Living Microorganisms in Human-Computer InteractionThere are trillions of living…

Find out more about the new version of the system, "The Thinking Cap 2.0" here.Peoples' mindsets, meaning their beliefs about their own int…

Serosa records gastrointestinal (stomach and intestinal) signals. Serosa aims for cognitive enhancement via the mind-gut connection by aidi…

In this work we suggest to harness the power of knowledge-seeking positive experiences, engagement, and curiosity that objects perceived as…

Our body and mind relate in ways which are extraordinarily enigmatic and seemingly incomprehensible. Recent findings exemplify this by show…

Flower is a new visualization tool for in-depth study of multi-sensor recordings in the time domain. It has been released for public downlo…

InspirationSleep is a forgotten country of the mind. A vast majority of our technologies are built for our waking state, even though a thir…

Several research projects have recently explored the use of physiological sensors such as electroencephalography (EEG - brain activity) or …

​The lotus flower is an ancient symbol that has been associated with spiritual awakening or enlightenment.In yoga and meditation, the lotus…

AlterEgo is a  non-invasive, wearable, peripheral neural interface that allows humans to converse in natural language with machin…

Plants can sense the environment, other living entities and regenerate, actuate or grow in response. Our interaction and communication…

With the exponential increase of personal data in the forms of images, videos, emails, and social media posts, the time is ripe for buildin…

inSight is a brain decoding system. It uses  generative models (BigGAN and MusicVAE) to stimulate the brain with synthetic, but natura…

Lab on Body, Synthetic Biology, and Bio-Digital Systems for Health and Human Enhancement

We are working on communication interfaces for people with speech and language disorders, incorporating technologies like physiological sen…

OverviewPAL is a  wearable platform for personalized, context-aware, and always-present user change.  PAL has mult…

​Interested in learning more about the Commalla project?  Fill out this form! 

​Situated VR: Towards a Congruent Hybrid RealityThe vision of Extended Reality (XR) systems is living in a hybrid reality or "Metaverse" wh…

Discreet Teeth Gestures for Mobile Device InteractionByte.it is a miniaturized, discreet interface that uses teeth gestures for hands-free …

HeartBit is an interface designed for haptic heart rate biofeedback. A handheld heart beats alongside your own, mirroring the size, weight,…

The World Health Organization estimates that more than 55 million people worldwide suffer from dementia. As the proportion of older people …

Exploring robotic sound generation mixed with human movements on the guitar. Guitar Machine II is a robotic guitar that responds to human g…

Virtual reality can help realize mediated social experiences where we interact as richly with those around the world as we do with those in…

Room-scale virtual reality opens up exciting new possibilities for exploratory learning. Phenomena that otherwise cannot be experienced dir…

Temperature influences our perception and cognition both consciously and subconsciously. These effects are rooted in our bodily experiences…

Mathematical experiences are intrinsic to our everyday lives, yet mathematics education is mostly confined to textbooks. Seymour Papert use…

The Blank Canvas directs immersion inwards using virtual reality, augmenting awareness of the microscopic worlds inside each of us and the …

NeverMind is an interface and application designed to support human memory. We combine the memory palace memorization method with augmented…

Real-time collaborative self-expression in virtual reality 

Elowan is a cybernetic lifeform, a plant in direct dialogue with a machine. Using its own internal electrical signals, the plant is interfa…

Our traditional manufacturing, fabrication, and electronics have been centered around synthetic and completely artificial techniques. Comin…

We present an interactive virtual reality (VR) experience that uses biometric information for reflection and relaxation. We monit…