Neuro Futures Cards Workshop
The Neuro Futures Cards Workshop and its materials grew out of the NISE Network’s Changing Brains project, where we tested participatory activities that help people talk about neuroscience through imagination, empathy, and values. Building on what worked on museum floors, I adapted this approach for professional settings, creating more neurotechnology-focused future scenarios with guidance from Drs. Karen Rommelfanger and Arleen Salles of IoNx↗. The new technology cards were also paired with provocation cards, based on the Artifact Group’s Tarot Cards of Tech, to surface conceptual gray areas.
In 2024, IoNx first used the cards in a workshop for the Center for Future Generations↗, where neuroscientists, ethicists, and policymakers reflected in small groups on the consequences in each scenario, then discussed governance strategies to address emerging neurotechnology. Participants left with a deeper ability to anticipate governance challenges beyond safety and compliance, and a clearer sense that experts alone cannot predict how neurotechnology will be used.
That same card-based, future scenario method became the foundation of a series of 2025 workshops run by IoNx in partnership with Japan’s Moonshot program, where we continued refining for more inclusive, futures-forward dialogue on neurotechnology.
We worked closely with our partners on the Internet of Brains (IoB)
Science Communication team to translate the cards into Japanese and refine them for local use. Building on the original workshop format, we iterated the scenarios across repeated expert sessions, and updated the visuals as GenAI image capabilities improved, allowing for more photorealistic technology cards. The updated technology cards carried forward design elements from earlier versions created by Emily Maletz for the NISE Network, while expanding the set with new scenarios shaped by workshop results and conversations with experts in Japan.
Neu World, an IoB program that uses sci-fi manga co-created by researchers and creators to explore possible futures, also shaped the new cards we added. In particular, the memory scenario on this page draws from Neu World’s manga ‘.raw,’ set in 2050. In the story, an artist is asked to use BMI technology to recreate a landscape her grandfather once saw, a place that no longer exists.
Reflecting on the card raises questions about memory, authenticity, consent, and what it means to “recreate” an experience for someone else. When we add a provocation about overuse, the discussion often goes somewhere unexpected, shifting from personal benefit into questions of pressure, misuse, and who gets to decide what should be shared.
No matter the setting, whether in an IoNx workshop or a hackathon, the cards help create a safe space for cross-disciplinary dialogue, where participants can surface shared values and build ethical reflection into how future neurotechnologies are imagined and designed.
Going further
- Read more about the public and professional resource of the Changing Brains project ↗ on nisenet.org
- Discover the sci-fi works of the Neu World project ↗ from IoB
- Read more about how Neuro Futures Cards played a role in the Neuroethics Hackathon from IoNx on the Writing+Talks page