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Targeted Dream Incubation

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

Dormio: Interfacing with Dreams

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

Thesis Research

Pharmamusicology: Exploring the Impact of Music on the Physiology and Psychology of Anxiety Disorders and Well-Being

Lecamwasam, K.H.M. (2023). Pharmamusicology: Exploring the Impact of Music on the Physiology and Psychology of Anxiety Disorders and Well-Being. Master's Thesis, MIT Media Lab.

Placebo effect shapes how we see AI

Research from the Fluid Interfaces group finds that users' perceptions of an AI chatbot influence their interactions with the technology.

The assumptions you bring into conversation with an AI bot influence what it says

In Scientific American, PhD student Pat Pataranutaporn talks about how a user's impressions of AI chatbots may influence their interactions.

Influencing human–AI interaction by priming beliefs about AI can increase perceived trustworthiness, empathy, and effectiveness

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

Does dream inception work?

Using Dormio, a project from the Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces research group, poet Will Dowd set out to pioneer a new reading experience.

Unlocking the Power of Goosebumps: The Surprising Emotional Effects of Aesthetic Chills

A new study suggests that experiencing aesthetic chills, or goosebumps, during stimuli like music and films can lead to increased emotions.

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Social Machines

Promoting deeper learning and understanding in human networks

Inventing the future of digitally augmented objects and environments.

Towards a Congruent Hybrid Reality without Experiential Artifacts

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

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Collective Learning

Transforming data into knowledge

New Study Highlights Opportunities for Artificial Emotional Intelligence

MIT uses affective computing in efforts to improve human mental health.

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ML Learning

Center for Civic Media

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Object-Based Media

Changing storytelling, communication, and everyday life through sensing, understanding, and new interface technologies

The Science Behind Creativity

Seli is an assistant professor at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and also an artist. He uses Dormio to tap into hypnagogia.

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SPRING: A Smart Platform for Research, Intervention, and Neurodevelopmental Growth

SPRING is a custom-built hardware and software platform for children with neuro-differences. The system automates data acquisition, optimiz…

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Podcast: Night Shifts

Perchance to dream engineer: on new research into our sleeping minds

Night Shifts

In the April issue, Michael W. Clune writes about the profound insights offered by the Dormio: "Can technology shape our dreams?"

How buildings and cities can become more intelligently responsive to the needs and desires of their inhabitants.

The consequences of hacking our dreams

Advertisers are beginning to explore ways to market products to people while they sleep. A group of scientists talked to NPR about the risks

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Are advertisers coming for your dreams?

"We can see the waves forming a tsunami that will come, but most people are just sleeping on a beach unaware"

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Multi-SPRING

OverviewWe have created a new customizable, multi-user research-through-play platform designed to facilitate social skill development for c…

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Advertisers are hijacking your dreams, scientists say

This is the actual stuff of nightmares.

Companies are ready to experiment with advertising in your dreams, and experts are sounding the alarm

Sleep and dream researchers are urging for an advance tightening of advertising law to nip all this in the bud before it starts in earnest.

Nightmare scenario: Alarm as advertisers seek to plug into our dreams

After Coors sought to steer unconscious minds to thoughts of beer, scientists have called for curbs on ‘targeted dream incubation.’

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SeqCLR: Self-supervised learning of features for time-series data

Interpreting human electroencephalogram (EEG) is a challenging task and requires years of medical training. We present a framework for lear…

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Scientists engineer dreams to understand the sleeping brain

Researchers in the Fluid Interfaces group and elsewhere are hoping to learn more about how and why dreams are generated, and their effects.

SkipNorm

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

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Synthetic Neurobiology

Revealing insights into the human condition and repairing brain disorders via novel tools for mapping and fixing brain computations

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Tools for mapping the molecular architecture and wiring of the brain

Complex biological systems such as brain circuits are extended 3-D structures made out of nanoscale building blocks such as proteins, RNAs,…

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New Media Medicine

How radical new collaborations will catalyze a revolution in health.

How to build characters that have the everyday common sense, the ability to learn, and the sense of empathy that one finds in animals such a

Modeling Auditory Memory

When we form memories, not everything that we perceive is noticed; not everything that we notice is remembered. Humans are excellent at f…

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Digital Life

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Relational AI

Creating long-term interpersonal interaction and shared experiences with social robots Many of our current projects explore the use of…

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Music, Mind and Machine

How to build intelligent music systems out of interacting audio-processing agents.

Digital Synesthesia

Digital Synesthesia looks to evolve the idea of human-computer interfacing and give way for human-world interacting. It aims to find a way …

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Ed Boyden on minding your brain

A conversation between Ed Boyden and Tyler Cowen on optogenetics and expansion microscopy to storytelling and the nature of consciousness.

Cognimates: Collaborative creative learning with embodied intelligent agents

Cognimates is a platform where parents and children (7-10 years old) participate in creative programming activities in which they lea…

Communications Futures Program

Lighting the path

Luminaries in computing and cognition discuss their journeys and share their insights.

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e-markets

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Future Storytelling

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Consumer Electronics Laboratory

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Masque

When the body senses itself internally and localizes its actions, it provides the basis for a material sense of self-existence. At th…

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FaceSense: Affective-Cognitive State Inference from Facial Video

People express and communicate their mental states–such as emotions, thoughts, and desires–through facial expressions, vocal nuances, gestu…

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Post Research

Making new (robot) friends: Further reading

For the interested reader:If you'd like to learn more about the topics covered in my post, Making new (robot) friends: Understanding …

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Electronic Publishing

How to distill meaning from complex everyday experiences.

Post Research

Making new (robot) friends

Understanding children's relationships with social robots

Some amazing facts about your unbelievable brain

Why was Einstein’s brain so good at some things and not others? Why is yours?

How people and objects can tell tales of their experience and learn from others as they navigate through the vast media fabric made up of intertwining storied threads.

Mindful Photons: Context-Aware Lighting

Light enables our visual perception. It is the most common medium for displaying digital information. Light regulates our circadian rhythms…

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How everything from interface agents to toys can be designed to respond with human-like, full-body linguistic and social competencies.

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How to give computers human-like intuition so they can better understand us.

eRationality

How we can understand human behavior (rationality, semi-rationality, bounded rationality, and just plain irrationality) in day-to-day behaviors, and in particular in electronic environments.

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How to engage diverse audiences in creating their own technology by situating computation in new contexts and building tools to democratize engineering.

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How to enhance understanding, enable creativity, and ease our interactions with the technological environment.

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How various phenomena of mind emerge from the interactions among many kinds of highly evolved brain mechanisms.

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