[Feature: The Forefront of Brain Science Research] Roundtable Discussion: The Future of Integrated Knowledge Pioneering Human Potential

Recently, it seems that three major intellectual frontiers for humanity have been envisioned. The first is "space." As you know, Elon Musk of Tesla and Jeff Bezos of Amazon are investing massive amounts of capital, accelerating development and commercialization.

The second is "Earth." The SDGs have been proposed, and the construction of a sustainable global society is being promoted. People like Bill Gates are focusing their attention on the global environment, suggesting that we should prioritize Earth over space.

And I believe the third is the "brain." Elon Musk has launched "Neuralink" in this field as well, developing implantable brain chips to help improve neurological disorders. It appears they are currently in negotiations with the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) to begin human clinical trials.

In this way, the "brain" and "brain science" have become extremely hot topics. Mita-hyoron (official monthly journal published by Keio University Press) featured a special issue on brain science 12 years ago, but today, including the developments since then, I would like to talk with four representatives of Keio University who stand at the forefront of brain science.

First, I would like you to introduce yourselves and tell us about the research you are doing and why you became interested in brain science. Ms. Minagawa, shall we start with you?

I belong to the Psychology Major in the Faculty of Letters. Since psychology is about "understanding the human mind scientifically," I clarify the mind using brain science methods such as experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. In particular, I am interested in brain development related to language and communication development in children.

Regarding my interest in brain science, my background was originally in linguistics, and I was particularly interested in second language acquisition. Within that, I was curious about things like "why Japanese people cannot distinguish between the English R and L sounds" and conducted research on it.

When I conducted various psychological experiments, I found that the reason why people cannot distinguish between R and L ultimately comes down to differences in the brain. Furthermore, while thinking about language acquisition, I wanted to see the brain functions and neural substrates of language, which led to my interest in brain science.

You run something called the "Baby Laboratory" within Keio. What kind of activities do you do there?

Infancy—that is, the period of zero and one-year-olds—is a time of dizzying brain development. In this lab, we clarify brain functions associated with various types of cognitive acquisition, and we conduct research that includes not only brain science but also behavioral studies.

Currently, I am primarily pursuing two major research projects. One is research on how the brains of children with developmental disorders, such as autism, develop. By comparing them with typically developing children, we clarify communication skills and brain development to aid in early diagnosis and early intervention.

The other is clarifying brain activity during communication between two people. In brain function research using MRI and other methods, we generally look at brain activity when someone is doing something alone, but with near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and EEG, we can see brain activity during dyadic interaction. When communication between two people goes well, their brain activity synchronizes.

I am conducting research to evaluate such brain synchronization and to visualize the dynamics of interaction at the brain level, such as how Person B reacts when Person A gives them a communication signal. This also serves as an application for autism research and helps in its elucidation.

Next, Mr. Yuzaki, please.

The catalyst for my interest in brain science began when I was a sensitive high school student and was hospitalized for a long period. At that time, I noticed that quite a few people were discharged only to return with the same symptoms.

Even as a high schooler, I thought that even if a gastric ulcer is cured with medicine, it would recur unless the causes—such as irritation and accumulated stress—were properly addressed. In other words, I wanted to research the relationship between the so-called mind and body.

After entering the School of Medicine and studying the mind and brain, I learned that even the physical basis of the brain, which should be the foundation of the mind, was not understood at all, and I wanted to understand that thoroughly first. That was my motivation for researching brain science.

The brain consists of tens of billions of neurons connected to each other, and the points where they connect are called synapses. These synapses form various neural circuits. The neural circuits work as a whole to produce various mental activities.

Whether it is developmental disorders like the autism spectrum disorder mentioned earlier, mental illnesses like schizophrenia, or neurological diseases like dementia, the original lesions of many diseases originate in the synapses. It is thought that causes include connections being too strong or, conversely, being too detached, which has led to concepts like "synaptopathy."

In our laboratory, we are continuing research to understand how these synapses are formed and under what conditions they are lost. We also aim to elucidate the molecular mechanisms by which connections become functionally stronger or weaker, leading to new treatment strategies for synaptopathy.

Now, Mr. Ushiba, please.

I have been researching brain science at the Faculty of Science and Technology for about 20 years. My interest in brain research began in elementary school when I heard that a very famous brain scientist named Dr. Gen Matsumoto was giving a lecture for children at a newspaper company's public seminar. I remember going to listen with my backpack on, feeling very excited.

What I still vividly remember is a story about a girl Dr. Matsumoto had interacted with. In fact, that girl had half of her brain surgically removed. However, she had recovered so much that you wouldn't have noticed it at all, and she was living a very human life. He said that when you looked at the MRI, almost half the brain was gone, but she was so intelligent that you couldn't tell just by looking at her. I was deeply shocked.

At that time, I learned that the brain has the great potential to dynamically rewire circuits within a single individual to restore lost functions, and I was very excited.

On the other hand, the technology to effectively draw out this "softness" of the brain, called "plasticity," from the outside did not yet exist. So, I wanted to create it and began researching technology at the Faculty of Science and Technology.

As soon as I entered the laboratory in Yagami, I asked my professor to arrange a seat for me in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the School of Medicine. For 20 years, I have been going back and forth—observing the front lines of medical examinations while sharing meals with medical professionals to find research topics, creating things at Yagami, and bringing them to the School of Medicine.

My specialty is research on "Brain-Machine Interface (BMI)," a technology that draws out such brain plasticity. We attach wearable EEG monitors and programs that analyze brain states with AI, along with robotics or neural electrical stimulation devices that operate based on those analysis results, to the body for exercise.

Even for people whose hands are paralyzed due to brain damage after a stroke, if they train with a BMI attached, they enter a state called "Brain-in-the-loop." When that loop rotates well, brain plasticity is induced, and we have become able to guide about 70% of people with severe motor disabilities—who could not be cured with standard treatments—toward a certain degree of recovery.

In short, I am conducting research on how to integrate AI and the brain to draw out brain plasticity.

Now, Mr. Minamizawa, please.

I work on what I call "Embodied Media," which connects the experiences people feel through their bodies with digital technology. Specifically, I focus on the sense of touch among the five senses. I have been researching how people perceive the sensation of touching or being touched, how they act, and how to reproduce that through engineering.

Through touch, we experience various things and build relationships with others. As I continued my research, my interest gradually shifted toward the mechanisms of human embodiment and sociality themselves. Currently, I view the body as an interface that connects people with the outside world, such as the environment and others, and I am exploring how the relationship between people and the outside world changes by using technology to augment or support that body.

Based on this background, I am currently serving as the Project Manager for Goal 1 of the "Moonshot Research and Development Program," an innovation creation program by the Cabinet Office and JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency), which aims to "realize a society in which human beings can be free from limitations of body, brain, space, and time by 2050."

In my project, we use the term "Cybernetic Being," and a world where one can have a body other than the one they were born with is now approaching. For example, it is becoming technically possible to act remotely by connecting and operating a body called an avatar in a virtual world, or a robot in another location, with one's own brain or consciousness.

I am exploring how our experiences, communication, ways of working, and lifestyles change when using such virtual worlds and robot avatars, while co-creating with people from various fields using a variety of technologies.

Just from what I've heard, I can see that the approaches and disciplines toward brain science are truly diverse.

By the way, let me explain, by way of self-introduction, why I, who teach constitutional law and human rights theory at the Faculty of Law and Law School, am serving as the moderator. In legal studies, "will" and "personality" are very important basic concepts, and we have discussed them on the premise that they are "autonomous" or "should be autonomous." However, I had always felt something suspicious about that, and then I encountered brain science, which shakes the autonomy of will and personality.

Goal 1 of the JST Moonshot program that Mr. Minamizawa mentioned is a brain science-related project, and I have been serving as the project leader in charge of ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues) there since last October. Also, in the same project, Mr. Ushiba serves as the Sub-Project Manager.

However, regarding the promotion of public research on brain research, I believe there are many more projects involving Keio University researchers. Mr. Yuzaki, could you supplement that a bit?

As for large-scale public research related to brain science involving the Keio School of Medicine, in the clinical field, for example, in AMED's (Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development) "Strategic Research Program for Brain Sciences," Professor Masaru Mimura of the Department of Neuropsychiatry and others are tracking mood disorders (depression) longitudinally with MRI for international comparison.

Alternatively, Professor Hideyuki Okano of the Department of Physiology is conducting research to use iPS cells for the treatment of spinal cord injuries and cerebral infarctions in AMED's project for the realization of regenerative medicine. Another AMED project is the "Strategic International Brain Science Research Promotion Program (Brain/MINDS)," which aims to elucidate pathological models of neuropsychiatric and developmental disorders using marmosets, which are experimental animals as close to humans as possible. Faculty members from the School of Medicine are also participating in this.

In areas closer to basic science, there is the JST ERATO Neuro-Molecular Project, where our department serves as the Keio base alongside Professor Itaru Hamachi's Kyoto University base. Also, in our department, a project to manipulate brain activity with light under JST CREST "Optobio" and research on synapse formation mechanisms under the Grant-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research are underway. In this way, quite large research funds are in motion.

Ms. Minagawa, do you have anything to add?

Brain science research in the Faculty of Letters does not have such large-scale projects, but my research on brain development in autism mentioned earlier is a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (S) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Also, brain science research on communication is part of JST CREST, which Mr. Ushiba is also involved in. In CREST, we are also attempting to support communication behavior by applying brain science knowledge of interaction to AI and engineering technology devices.

Of the nine full-time faculty members in the Psychology Major, seven specialize in cognitive neuroscience or neuroscience, so they are involved in several of the projects Mr. Yuzaki mentioned, and some professors are participating in the Moonshot research on the co-evolution of AI and robots (Goal 3).

There are very diverse approaches and projects, including public funds and government-related ones. On the other hand, I think corporate interest is also high.

Recently, we have been hearing the term "Braintech" quite often. Large companies have long had a need for kansei engineering—that is, wanting to use what consumers feel is good for marketing and product development.

For example, Toppan Printing and Dentsu ScienceJam have been involved in this field for a long time, and other companies like NTT Data Institute of Management Consulting and the semiconductor manufacturer Macnica have launched businesses. Besides those, startups are increasing rapidly not only overseas but also domestically.

I myself have started a company to commercialize wearable BMIs for treating motor disabilities after a stroke as medical devices, and I am aiming to obtain medical device approval/certification and start sales within this year.

In this way, Braintech has progressed significantly in fields such as marketing, medical devices, and healthcare. I have started hearing about it quite a bit in the last three years or so.

How about you, Mr. Minamizawa?

In my circles, it's more about the body than the brain itself, but since everyone started remote working due to COVID-1{9}, there is a high demand for technology to act regardless of distance, or technology to convey the sensations and experiences of others who are different from oneself to another person.

For example, companies like Toyota and ANA, whose business has been "movement," are entering the field of avatar robots with an eye toward a future where people can be active without physically moving by car or plane. Among telecommunications companies, creating new forms of human activity areas using cyber space by utilizing 5G high-speed communication has begun to become a very large industry in the last three or four years, and research, development, and commercialization are accelerating.

We have also launched a company called Telexistence Inc. as a startup from the University of Tokyo and Keio University, aiming to create new ways of working through avatar robots.

So, the scope of brain science research and commercialization is expanding very broadly.

Next, based on your current efforts, I would like to ask how the near future will unfold. From your current sites and technological progress, are there any stories about possibilities in brain science or dramatic points in recent years?

One major direction of brain science research is the approach that if we understand the entire wiring diagram of the brain, we might understand how the brain works. If you want to know how an electrical circuit works, you can't understand it without a wiring diagram. However, there are tens of billions of neurons, and each neuron forms about a thousand synapses, so the total number of synapses reaches the scale of 100 trillion. Can we actually determine such a complex wiring diagram?

This was considered impossible 10 years ago, but now there is something called connectomics. For example, even with electron microscopes, where it used to take several years to determine a 1 cubic millimeter circuit with a single electron gun, an electron microscope has been developed that aligns 61 electron guns to make it 61 times faster. Even using dozens of such electron microscopes, I think it would take decades to determine the entire wiring diagram of the human brain, but the entire wiring diagram of small animal brains will gradually be determined.

However, just because the wiring diagram is determined doesn't mean we know how the neural circuits are moving. Therefore, technology development is progressing to record activity from more neurons with higher precision in temporal and spatial resolution. Ultimately, we aim to be able to simultaneously record the activity of individual neurons from tens of billions of neurons while they are acting or thinking.

Functional MRI (which images which parts of the brain's functional activity occurred) increases in resolution as the magnetic field is strengthened, and the average value of the activity of tens of thousands of neurons in each part of the entire brain becomes visible. Looking with near-infrared light called NIRS, the average activity of about 100,000 neurons near the brain surface can be measured. EEG has higher temporal resolution than NIRS, but it is still the average value of neural activity near the brain surface. It is difficult to record neural activity throughout the entire human brain with high temporal resolution.

It can only be done in experimental animals, but it has become possible to record the activity of individual neurons in units of hundreds of thousands to millions by pre-installing something in the neurons that changes fluorescence intensity when each neuron is active. By analyzing these results, it is increasingly being revealed which neural circuits perform what calculations and what actions the animal takes as a result. I believe that will continue to be one of the major trends in future research.

Does that mean if we accurately read out the entire structure of neural circuits and upload it to a machine, we will be able to perform the functions that the brain fulfills?

That is the approach. Ultimately, we will reconstruct it on a supercomputer so that we can simulate how the brain works during illness. It's the world of "whole-brain simulation." To perform whole-brain simulation, higher-precision spatial and temporal information about neural activity is required.

However, it is probably impossible to record all the activity of neurons in the deep parts of the human brain, decode the results in real-time, and have them perfectly expressed in an avatar. But I think technological development will progress to estimate neural activity, including deep parts, from information obtained from the brain surface—for example, to "move the hand" of a paralyzed patient.

If this progresses, will we see a prospect for solving things like dementia, which is one type of synaptopathy?

I think there will be progress, but there are still biological aspects. Once you connect an electrical circuit, that's it, but our cranial nerves get thicker if we use them, and if we don't use them, they weaken and are eventually lost—and they are also lost when we get sick.

Whether that state can be completely reproduced through information engineering simulation is, I think, impossible. To elucidate the soft brain—the plasticity Mr. Ushiba mentioned earlier—a biological approach is necessary. That's why we are researching synapses, which are the substance of that softness.

The constituent elements of the brain include various indispensable elements such as cells and blood vessels, but from my standpoint, I would like to mention that there is a computational dimension at a more macro level: "What kind of processing does the brain do for what kind of input to produce output?" It's like a computer program, a view of the brain as an information processing machine, focusing on what purpose the brain is calculating for. In other words, if you think with system thinking, I think a slightly different perspective comes into view.

I believe that our understanding will deepen by capturing the process of having a brain, having a body, and forming oneself while interacting with the outside world, moving the body skillfully, and learning things from a macro perspective of the whole.

Then, when a part of the brain is damaged and functions can no longer be maintained, we will be able to design how to process and compensate for the missing parts with AI, how to make the robot respond well, and how to create a brain-in-the-loop. When such design becomes possible, the brain changes dynamically in the process of interaction between the brain and the machine, so we will be able to induce the recovery of brain functions or integrate will into the machine for smooth communication. I believe there are aspects where we will be able to do things that were impossible with conventional medical care and welfare.

In the world of science and technology, quantum mechanics and quantum computing are very popular now, and a world is expanding where, if we base ourselves on the physical properties and principles that become visible at the level of a single small quantum particle, we will be able to perform calculations that cannot be solved with conventional methods.

On the other hand, at the size of centimeters or meters, quantum properties become difficult to see, and Newtonian mechanics dominates. Both are very important, but the physical principles that dominate the world are completely different depending on which world you cut out. Similarly, within the brain, there are stories at the level of genes, molecules, and neural circuits, but there is also a world of understanding and mastering it as a system or computation in a macro world.

That's why the world of the brain is truly vast, and I think the very interesting point is that there are various discoveries from diverse standpoints and that technology is being created from them.

To put it crudely, something like human-machine theory has existed for a long time, but on the other hand, humans are living organisms, living things. The question of how to handle this relationship is a major challenge even from a humanities perspective.

Furthermore, which layer should we focus on: information → synapses → cells → body → humans and society? Or should we stand on a perspective of integrating them as a system? I found this very interesting.

Regarding what was just said, I feel like I'm roughly somewhere between Mr. Yuzaki and Mr. Ushiba (laughs). I think I'm looking at the layer of the brain's region level, which is a bit larger than the cell or molecular level of the brain's functional mechanisms.

For example, until a little while ago, we only knew which region was active in a certain cognitive task, but recently, due to deep learning and computational progress, we have been able to clarify the level of fine stages and states in brain connections and how they are repeated.

In terms of my specialty, development, the brain connection state of preterm infants at birth—which also involves synapses—initially only connects over a short range. However, when they receive stimuli from the outside world, long-distance connections are gradually formed. I think it's a big deal that we can now see such characteristics in more detail.

From a humanities perspective, this leads to the question of how brain development forms systems based not only on the external environment but also on factors of interaction with people, and further, how individual brains create society and culture. Such brain science findings in psychology can also be useful for engineering and are currently frequently cited in behavioral economics.

I think my standpoint is one macro layer further than Mr. Ushiba's. In other words, while paying attention to what is happening within individual humans, I am interested in what is happening at the level of society and communities as a network of humans.

What we are trying to do in our Moonshot project is to see how far brain plasticity can be demonstrated under boundary conditions that are not the state of the brain being contained within the physical body, which conventional brain science has assumed.

For example, if a person has a body different from their own physical body and it is of a different gender, can the cognitive-behavioral system itself change or be updated? Or, when a person has a virtual bird body, can we support the brain in adapting to the new body so they can fly? Earlier, there was a story about functions recovering even if half the brain is gone, but conversely, I feel that the brain has potential that does not fit into its current single body. When we present completely new boundary conditions to our brain, how will the brain adapt to them?

For example, considering the possibility of the consciousness or experience of another person far away flowing in, or having a body with a completely different shape from one's original self through an avatar and acting in a completely different space, the human brain might actually have the potential to grasp such things. I want to explore that.

This is not just a sci-fi story; for example, in our project, we are currently supporting patients who are bedridden due to physical disabilities or ALS to work, go to school, and engage in social activities using avatars. There is a completely new frontier for them, such as playing tag for the first time in their lives or having someone wave back for the first time in their lives.

In that way, how much potential does the human brain have? I think my research from my standpoint is about how to understand that.

That is incredibly interesting. The blurring of boundaries between oneself and others is precisely the pathology of schizophrenia—a state where one cannot tell if a voice is their own, a thought, or a voice from the outside.

It's not just humans; fish use their lateral lines to sense water currents and sound, but if they were constantly hearing the noise generated by their own swimming, it would be too loud to function. Therefore, there are neural circuits that suppress components derived from one's own body movements. I imagine that as bodies are extended through avatars and such, those neural circuits will likely change as well. I would definitely love to see that.

It is said that the sense of touch originally developed from the lateral lines of fish. While touch possesses the cognitive function of recognizing the boundary between self and other, I believe it can also be directed toward expanding that recognition.

Ultimately, this too comes down to synapses (laughs).

This conversation is very fascinating. The theme of Moonshot Goal 1, which I mentioned earlier, aims to "realize a society in which human beings can be free from limitations of body, brain, space, and time by 2050." However, if humans are liberated from the brain, body, time, and space, perhaps nothing of the "human" will actually remain (laughs).

Conversely, one could say that being constrained by the brain, body, time, and space is what makes us human. If liberated, where would humans go? I think there is a possibility that the anthropic principle itself might vanish, changing how we perceive the universe.

I believe there is both a vague anxiety toward such a direction and an expectation of wanting to take that leap. What are your thoughts on this?

One of the policies of my project is to strongly advocate for the guarantee of self-agency. Currently, there seem to be two schools of thought within the concept of avatars. One is research directed toward creating an alter ego completely detached from oneself, which performs social activities and works outside of one's own consciousness. On the other hand, we want to focus on the expansion of one's own consciousness. We want to design new bodies on the premise that those experiences are fed back and integrated into the person's own growth.

If you imagine a high-productivity factory, it is more efficient to create alter egos. Having 100 avatars working and earning money on their own without your knowledge—that is one way of thinking, but I fear that eventually, humans would become unnecessary.

Can we use brain science and avatar technology to accumulate better life experiences and expand ourselves? If we don't firmly address this, there is a concern that the human core will vanish, so we always emphasize the sense of self-agency and the sense of agency in one's actions.

I see. There is one thing I definitely want to ask everyone gathered here today. I mentioned "liberating humans from the brain, body, time, and space," but I feel that the thing providing the catalyst for that liberation has historically been "death," not science. Once you die, you are liberated from these things. Thus, I feel that current brain science research has the potential to provide something that substitutes for "death."

I think this already possesses a reality that goes beyond mere romanticism. Dr. Yuzaki, as someone in the medical field, how do you perceive this?

That's interesting. However, I haven't thought about it much (laughs). Death is certainly a liberation from physical conditions, but if consciousness is gone, we no longer know if it is liberation. If we are to be liberated from the body, time, and space, I thought it might be closer to a religious experience. Like the Buddha's concept of "the universe is the self," where all boundaries between oneself and others disappear.

When we get into this territory, it truly becomes an ethical field, and one wonders if it's okay to do such things. There are stories of out-of-body experiences just before death. It is said that now, by stimulating certain areas, one can have an experience of leaving the body and looking down at oneself from above, and personally, I'd like to try that (laughs).

The boundary between self and other and the sense of self-agency are indeed major topics in psychology. One reason humans evolved is that we have helped each other as a group while cooperating with various people. Because humans were always communicating while inferring the mental state of others, the so-called social brain developed.

So, if brain technology allows us to know the other person's emotions or creates a state where we don't have to infer their mind—if the boundary between self and other truly disappears—I feel that such a social brain might gradually deteriorate.

In fact, children do not have a sense of self-agency at first. By around one and a half years old, the level of "self" gradually becomes complete. It is acquired through communication with the outside world, and there are specific areas in the brain that activate accordingly. Thinking about it that way, even for avatars that are alter egos of the self, I felt that those possessing the Minamizawa-style sense of self-agency are better.

Regarding the two schools of thought Dr. Minamizawa mentioned earlier, the term "Being" in your concept of "Cybernetic Being" carries the meaning you described, doesn't it?

Yes, that is my intention.

I strongly agree. Since I also link the brain and machines via BMI, I am often asked to what extent that remains human. My own research is close to Dr. Minamizawa's perspective; the origin of my research is the desire to support people with physical disabilities so they can live their lives in a way that is true to themselves.

One day, my grandfather had a stroke and became unable to speak. When he tried to utter words, his nerves would miswire, and completely different words would come out, resulting in aphasia. He would get frustrated and angry about it. It was painful for him and difficult for those around him.

Considering that some people dramatically recover function even after losing half their brain, humans should inherently have that biological potential. While we should be able to restore human dignity through that, we cannot do so because we don't understand the brain well enough or lack the technology to draw out those abilities effectively.

I feel that such a state is somehow unfair and incomplete. I hope to create technology that aligns more with human-centricity and builds a society in a state that should naturally exist. I want BMI to be centered on a human-oriented way of living.

I think this issue is very important as an ELSI challenge.

Intellectual reactions to new technologies in the humanities and social sciences, not just in legal studies, are generally cautious at first. A certain kind of rejection automatically emerges, wondering if something bad will happen or if an unavoidable situation will arise.

However, social scientists, including legal scholars, then begin to consider whether this sense of discomfort or caution can be justified. When they do, they often find it was merely a preconception, and they can establish a logical path where we should calmly develop the good aspects and exclude only the bad ones.

On the other hand, regarding the social implementation of technology, while society may show excessive caution toward the unknown, conversely, excessive expectations can also be amplified. I believe legal scholars need to manage both well, bringing both excessive caution and excessive expectations to a soft landing.

I believe brain science is a transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and comprehensive academic study, and I would like you to speak about that. If we were to promote cross-disciplinary exchange and collaboration within and outside of Keio University, would brain science serve as a platform for that?

The most prominent feature of brain research is that its hierarchy ranges widely from the macro level to the molecular level. Of course, this is true for any organ, but the brain is the most multi-layered. There are methods that approach it by recording neural activity as a group at the individual level, and methods that study the molecular level that forms synapses. Connecting research across each hierarchy becomes essential.

Now that information science has developed greatly, allowing for easy simulations and calculations using various algorithms, this is one way to connect the multiple hierarchies.

As Dr. Ushiba said earlier, if we understand what kind of calculations are being performed in which parts of the brain through inputs and outputs, we can then investigate the neural circuits in those locations at the molecular level.

In Japan, the entry of people from information science into neuroscience is still slow. However, this year's Annual Meeting of the Japan Neuroscience Society will be held as a joint meeting with the Japanese Society for Neurochemistry and the Japanese Neural Network Society, which is centered on information engineering.

Integration with the field of artificial intelligence is essential. There are two schools of thought in AI as well: one direction says it doesn't matter how the brain actually calculates as long as it works well, while another flow, as "Next AI," aims to create next-generation AI by understanding the computational principles used by the brain. I believe interaction with such areas is also necessary.

In addition to efforts to connect these multiple hierarchies, brain science has a broad surrounding area, so when considering social implementation, it becomes interdisciplinarily related to fields like law and education.

Dr. Minagawa, your original academic background was in comparative culture and linguistics. What are your thoughts from the perspective of integrating the humanities and sciences?

My graduate studies were in medical sciences. Moreover, since my academic advisor was from an engineering background, my research during graduate school already transcended boundaries, and I have conducted interdisciplinary research across medical sciences, engineering, psychology, and linguistics.

In that sense, a comprehensive university like Keio is a very good environment for me. There are days when I visit Yagami, Shinanomachi, and Mita all in one day. My research has always been collaborative with professors from the Faculty of Science and Technology, as well as with the Departments of Pediatrics and Otolaryngology in the School of Medicine.

In autism research, for example, I ask professors in the Faculty of Science and Technology for technology to perform image analysis of social behavior and label various actions. On the other hand, developmental disorders are also common among preterm infants; if born before 30 weeks of gestation, neural connections often become poor. To understand that, we must understand the development at the cellular level of the brain, so research at the level of the fetal brain is necessary.

As Dr. Yuzaki mentioned, unless we connect everything from the molecular and cellular levels to the macro levels, many things cannot be resolved. When it comes to the treatment and education of developmental disorders, it becomes a matter of social systems, so it also relates to educational issues. Naturally, connections with sociology and legal studies also emerge.

Ultimately, I think it would be ideal if we could create a system where we face the challenges of individuals and society, have a common goal for the future, and people from all fields approach solving those challenges with their respective expertise, saying, "In that case, I will do this." I believe that is the most important part of integration and collaboration.

While there is a perspective on what to do as an academic discipline, I think it's about how what we do actually contributes to the future of humanity and to people facing difficulties ten or several decades from now. I believe Dr. Minagawa's various collaborations are moving because she is thinking about how to contribute to children with autism ten years from now, and we ourselves face various challenges. Constraints of the body, brain, and space create various inconveniences and disabilities in society, and our stance is to solve those together to create a better future.

I often collaborate with companies and individuals. When corporate people, designers, and lawyers all share a common understanding of what to solve, it goes well.

It is important for the university as a whole to implement methodologies that serve as such a driving force—specifically depicting challenges and visions of the future and conducting co-creative research at the site of society. Since Keio originally advocates the philosophy of jitsugaku (science), it would be interesting if the pursuit of science within the connection to society moves dynamically.

I have worked with science and technology and medical sciences as my core, but I think brain science is a very interesting field with great potential to extend into the humanities and social sciences.

My father (Professor Emeritus Akio Ushiba) was in the Faculty of Letters and analyzed the writer Proust. According to my father, the telephone was invented as a high technology during Proust's writing years, allowing one's intentions to be transmitted instantly to someone far away. There is a scene in Proust's work where a character talks to their grandmother on the phone, and it is said that the high-tech telephone is used there as an analogy to Orpheus desperately trying to bring back his wife from the underworld in Greek mythology.

In that way, I think literary works now treated as classics were also accompanied by the emergence of new technologies that changed the world and life at the time they were born. I believe there was a form where various people's thoughts, emotions, or imaginations were layered there, and stories were woven on top of technology as romantic tales, such as a dialogue with a grandmother nearing death or a moment of connecting hearts with a girlfriend who cannot be met far away. And there, they likely found commonalities with universal aesthetic senses from ancient times.

Therefore, in addition to social sciences like law, I believe there is a perspective in the world of literature on how to perceive high technology as one element that builds our culture and civilization. I would love to have dialogues about technology with people who study literature or aesthetics from such a perspective.

There is an urban legend that a telephone is buried under the grave of the founder of Christian Science in the suburbs of Cambridge. Perhaps if brain science technology develops, picking up the receiver might allow communication with the afterlife (laughs). This shows that such ideas have indeed existed for a long time.

My other interest is education, from affiliated schools to the university and graduate school. There are very few schools like Keio that traditionally have such rich vertical and horizontal connections. I myself have studied here since the Yochisha Elementary School. There was an opportunity where Professor Masakazu Nakanishi's computer class in the Faculty of Science and Technology gathered Yochisha students at Yagami and graduate students taught us; touching AI there is what made me who I am today.

Now, one can learn AI at the AI and Advanced Programming Consortium (AIC), an all-Keio organization established by President Itoh. Students from the School of Medicine and the Faculty of Economics come here. I think it has been renewed and is active as a truly wonderful initiative.

Also, regarding the collaboration between medicine and science and technology, there is a boom in a mechanism called biodesign, where engineering supports or invents new medical treatments. In industry-academia collaboration, a system has been established to grow businesses in the form of startups, and within that, collaboration between society and the university is progressing.

Since such initiatives are happening in various parts of Keio, I think if there were initiatives that could be supported more on an all-Keio basis, we could develop many talented people needed in future society.

When I was a student, there wasn't that much collaboration yet, and it was very difficult even to get one credit from the School of Medicine recognized as a credit for the Faculty of Science and Technology. I went about it while appealing, "I want to do a double major in Japan." If such things become more common, Keio will become a school that can draw out much of the potential of young people. I think brain science is one platform where that can be done in a good way.

Having served as the principal of the high school in Hiyoshi, I also feel the need to strengthen the collaboration between high schools and the university/graduate schools. I am in the Faculty of Law, and children in affiliated schools are precocious, so some start preparing for the bar exam in junior high school. Then, they might pass the preliminary exam in their third year of high school. Then the question becomes what they will do in the university faculty.

The education provided by Keio will likely focus on how to differentiate oneself as a legal professional after obtaining legal qualifications. At that time, whether it's in science and technology, studying abroad, or languages, it will be necessary to open their interests beyond the domain of their affiliated faculty.

While there are aspects where I feel today's young students are unreliable, they are quite worried about their own futures in their own way and actually possess quite proper new ideas and academic orientations. Rather, I always think the problem is that adults are not providing things that can respond to them. Double degrees between research schools and collaboration with affiliated schools are increasingly important, and I believe it is time to establish a platform for human resource development within Keio that looks toward cross-disciplinary and humanities-science integration.

Currently, in conjunction with "Brain Awareness Week," five brain science-related laboratories in the School of Medicine are distributing on-demand videos titled "Nou Gakumon no Susume" for high school students (Keio University School of Medicine Brain Awareness Week - Brain Awareness Week 2021). It would be great if we could expand this together with brain science-related classrooms on other campuses.

Also, I am currently the president of the Japan Neuroscience Society, and as an outreach activity supported by MEXT, we have been conducting the "Brain Bee" for three years. This is an attempt where tutors are assigned to junior and senior high school students to study brain science, and one winner is selected through an exam to be sent to the international competition. While Keio's affiliated schools are of course important, I hope we can involve other junior and senior high students in the region and do this as a united Keio.

I think it's ideal for brain science research to decide on a certain program and have various people from each field gather for it, but since we cannot yet sufficiently see what kind of brain science research is being conducted within Keio, I first want us to understand that about each other. I would love for everyone to gather and be able to say, "Oh, you're doing that? Then let's do it together."

In our project as well, various problems arise the moment people with disabilities actually work via avatars. First, nursing care insurance can no longer be used. The moment they perform that work overseas, questions arise such as whether this constitutes entry into the country and which country's minimum wage applies; various legal challenges alone are constantly emerging on the ground.

As is the case with AI, robots, brain science, and BMI, while these new technologies have various potentials, they also harbor various challenges. But the dynamics born from that are very interesting. I think if students can feel those dynamics, they will be able to realize how it relates to them when viewed from their respective academic fields.

It was more than 10 years ago, but when I went to Harvard Law School, the dean at the time said they were introducing a course called Problem Solving as a required subject for first-year students. In short, they show people who are about to become lawyers an attempt to solve problems by integrating various disciplines other than law. Based on that, they make them aware of the role law plays.

Following that, I think it is necessary to know and share the challenges and reality itself that must be solved before drumming specific disciplines into each faculty. Sharing problems and challenges has universal meaning across faculties and domains. I think a university must have such a horizon.

I also started a small research group called IoB-S (Internet of Brains Society) and began activities. Mainly legal scholars, lawyers, and political scientists are studying brain science, and if various projects within and outside Keio, including this small unit, resonate, a synergy effect will surely be born. Brain science will be the optimal topic to make that possible.

Today's roundtable discussion is the start of that, so let's continue the dialogue and do our best as "All Keio."

Thank you very much for joining us today despite your busy schedules.