Behavioral techniques and AR technology to systematically control the brain activity outside of the laboratory

This study reviews the behavioral techniques that use the properties of visual stimuli to systematically control the activity of specific regions of an observer’s brain and proposes an Augmented Reality (AR) head-mounted display (HMD) that are implemented these techniques as image filters. The camera of the AR HMD captures an image of a real scene out there and the filter is applied to the captured image. Then, the filtered image is shown to an observer wearing the HMD in real-time or near real-time as if the observer is seeing the scene directly. The HMD allows us to use the behavioral techniques to control the brain activity while the observer can move freely. Note also that the AR HMD can be assembled by combining a smartphone and a wearable stereoscope, making it widely available and highly affordable. So, researchers with limited budgets can conduct neuroscience studies and students can learn about these subjects in low-income countries or in underfunded institutions. It can contribute to the democratization of neuroscience and the global equity of scientific research. We developed two AR HMDs with some of the image filters and conducted an observational field study. Applications of the proposed AR HMD are discussed.