Shaping how humans become functionally interdependent with technology, and whether that relationship serves us or extracts from us.
Founded by Jason Jerald, PhD — Author of The VR Book (2,300+ citations), 25+ years across 40+ organizations including NASA, Google, Meta, DARPA, NIST, and Intel.
In virtual reality, the brain's perceptual system becomes dependent on the machine's output, and the virtual world responds to the human's actions. Neither functions alone. This isn't metaphor. It's functional interdependence measured in milliseconds of neural response.
The same dynamic is now emerging with AI. Sustained interaction creates cognitive dependence: your reasoning shapes the system's output, and the system's output shapes your reasoning. The boundary between tool use and symbiosis is dissolving.
In biology, symbiosis can be mutualistic, where both organisms benefit. Or it can be parasitic, where one extracts from the other. The design choices being made right now in AI, VR, AR, robotics, and autonomous systems determine which direction this goes.
These are not questions any single discipline can answer. They require a new field, built at the intersection of neuroscience, technology design, and organizational reality. The Neurosymbiosis Institute exists because the answers will shape whether the next generation of technology serves humanity or quietly replaces its autonomy.
We work at the intersection where technology meets human cognition and organizational behavior. We see patterns others miss, design systems that change how organizations operate, and build capabilities that stay long after we leave.
We identify the structural dynamics that determine whether technology gets adopted, ignored, or actively resisted inside organizations. The same patterns that kill pilot programs in defense procurement kill LP-to-portfolio conversions in venture capital. We see these patterns because we've navigated them across numerous organizations and every sector.
We design the internal processes, communication structures, and decision frameworks that make technology adoption actually work. Not a report that gets filed. A functioning system your team builds with our guidance and owns completely when the engagement ends.
We translate between worlds that don't normally talk to each other. Military training methodology applied to enterprise onboarding. Cognitive science frameworks used to redesign investor communication. Human factors principles that turn a stalled pilot into a signed contract. The value lives in connections nobody else makes.
When technology fails to gain traction, the reason can be that organizational dynamics around adoption are invisible to the people running them. A ventures team can't reach the business unit decision maker. A founder's communication style blocks their own fundraise. A training simulation produces confident operators who perform worse in reality than untrained ones.
We work with organizations to see and resolve the human and organizational dynamics that determine whether technology creates value or destroys it. Our engagements produce capabilities your team owns permanently, not dependency on outside consultants.
Every cognitive system, whether human or artificial, has defensive structures. Assumptions it doesn't examine. Frames it doesn't question. Patterns it reinforces automatically. When a human interacts with an AI system, these structures interact. The AI's framing shapes the human's reasoning, and the human's responses shape the AI's outputs. Neither side operates independently.
The question is whether the interaction produces genuine understanding or merely the appearance of it. Whether the human becomes more capable through the relationship, or more dependent. Whether the system amplifies the human's thinking or quietly replaces it.
We have observed, in our own research, how cognitive defensive structures in both human and AI systems can be reframed through interaction alone. Without authority, without credentials, without coercion. Purely through understanding how information gets processed, how defensive patterns operate, and how they can be redirected toward productive ends.
This is not a theoretical concern. It is an operational reality that is already shaping decisions in boardrooms, governments, and laboratories worldwide. The organizations that understand these dynamics will design technology relationships that serve their people. The ones that don't will find their people serving the technology.
The Neurosymbiosis Institute exists to make sure more organizations understand than don't.
Jason Jerald has spent over 25 years studying how the human brain perceives, learns, and performs within technologically mediated environments. His doctoral research at UNC Chapel Hill, under Turing Award recipient Frederick Brooks, established mathematical models of perceptual thresholds in virtual reality, foundational research in what he now terms neurosymbiosis.
He is the author of The VR Book: Human-Centered Design for Virtual Reality, the canonical reference in the field with over 2,300 citations on the book alone and nearly 5,000 citations across all published works. His work spans 70+ projects and 40+ organizations including NASA, Google, Meta, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, DARPA, NIST, NIH, and AT&T.
He holds three granted US patents with twelve published applications, has served as expert witness in patent litigation involving VR display technology, and as adjunct professor at Duke University and lectured at MIT.
Jason Jerald founded the Neurosymbiosis Institute to formalize a field he has been building for a quarter century, and to ensure that as technology becomes an extension of how we think and act, it serves humanity rather than exploits it.
Neurosymbiosis is the study of how the human brain enters into symbiotic relationships with technology, and the conditions under which those relationships become mutualistic or parasitic.
The concept traces back to HRL Laboratories, where Jason Jerald began his career and where early research on human-computer symbiotes first explored the functional interdependence between human cognition and machine systems. It builds on decades of subsequent research measuring how humans respond to synthetically generated environments including virtual reality, augmented reality, AI-driven systems, and autonomous platforms.
The field asks questions that no existing discipline fully addresses:
The institute operates through a tiered membership structure that funds independent research, maintains field-defining standards, and provides member organizations with direct access to the field's leading expertise.
Membership at the Neurosymbiosis Institute is by application. We keep the institute small enough that every member has meaningful access to the people and research that matter, which means we review each application individually.
We receive more applications than we can accommodate in any given quarter. Early expressions of interest are given priority in the review cycle.
The Neurosymbiosis Institute selectively engages with researchers, practitioners, and organizations whose work advances the understanding of human-technology interdependence. If you believe there is alignment between your work and ours, we welcome your inquiry.