Ever since the president of the U.S. defined the next century as that of brain in 1989--1990, brain and cognitive sciences have always been among the top-priority target fields for federal budgets, including NIH and NSF. The situation has been similar in Japan as well, as illustrated in various new funding systems such as the Brain Science Initiative, the Human Frontier Science Program, ERATO/CRESTO, etc. Interestingly, not just the government but also media, automobile, and electronics industries all have been competing to sponsor research on brain and cognition in various ways. What made these trends even faster and more visible was the "conversion" of some Nobel Prize laureates, such as Francis Crick and Susumu Tonegawa, into neuroscience and studies of consciousness or memory. So, what made the scientists, the governments, and people become that interested in the brain and its functions? Obviously, the brain is the final frontier in science (perhaps except for the universe)---This should be true to some scientists at least. More important for the ordinary people, however, is the hidden, or implicit anticipation that scientific research of the brain and mind will soon have direct impacts on our social systems and lives. My intuition points the same. Along this line of thought, I as a cognitive brain scientist will try to introduce the audience to the modern technology/methodology in the field, to predict future directions, and to discuss how they will bear on the value systems and real life in the contemporary world. Along the way, I will consider issues such as; how we could avoid human errors which cause fatal disasters, whether or not "mind control" would be possible in some sense, whether or not the new media environment changes children's brains, what is artificial and what is natural for humans, how we should characterize modern civilization in a global sense, biological determinism and materialistic reformalism, etc. These are not just examples, but rather the ultimate tests waiting in front of us, as far as I can see. And to be honest, we do not have any solution to them, but could perhaps try to set people ready a little better.
