Information interaction systems are once again at a turning point. Search, recommendation, conversational, and decision-support technologies have achieved remarkable success by leveraging behavioral traces such as queries, clicks, and dwell time. Yet these signals remain indirect proxies for user intent, offering only a partial view of the cognitive and emotional processes that govern how people interpret information, experience uncertainty, and make decisions.

Recent advances in neurophysiological and physiological sensing, combined with rapid progress in artificial intelligence, create a fundamentally new opportunity. Signals derived from brain activity and bodily responses provide direct, time-sensitive access to attention, memory load, trust, affect, and decision-making processes. While such signals have been studied for decades in neuroscience and human–computer interaction, their integration into information interaction systems remains fragmented, methodologically inconsistent, and largely confined to proof-of-concept studies.

This Dagstuhl Seminar is motivated by a critical gap: the absence of a unified, field-level effort to position neurophysiological signals as a foundational component of information interaction. Existing work has treated cognitive sensing, interactive systems, and artificial intelligence largely in isolation. What is missing is a coherent synthesis that connects theory, signal processing, system design, evaluation, and ethics into a single research agenda centered on information interaction.

The five-day seminar aims to bring together researchers from information retrieval, human–computer interaction, neuroscience, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and ethics, many of whom do not typically meet within the same venues, to address this gap. By deliberately bridging communities that have evolved in parallel, the seminar aims to catalyze new collaborations and establish a shared vocabulary and set of research priorities.

The objective of the seminar is to move beyond fragmented studies and define the foundations of neurophysiological information interaction as a rigorous and reproducible field. In particular, the seminar will focus on three interconnected objectives: (i) establishing theoretical models linking neurophysiological signals to core concepts such as relevance, satisfaction, and uncertainty; (ii) developing reproducible pipelines, multimodal fusion techniques, benchmarks, and evaluation paradigms that account for both system performance and cognitive outcomes; and (iii) defining frameworks for transparency, fairness, mental privacy, and inclusive system design.

The seminar will follow an intensive and structured format over five days. Initial sessions will establish shared foundations through keynotes and cross-disciplinary discussions. Subsequent days will focus on signals, models, and systems, including multimodal integration, neuroadaptive interfaces, and proactive information access. Dedicated sessions will address evaluation, benchmarking, and reproducibility, while later stages will synthesize outcomes through collaborative working groups and a structured write-a-thon to produce a shared roadmap and concrete artefacts. The expected outcomes include a Dagstuhl Report, a community roadmap, and the foundations for shared datasets, benchmarks, and reproducible pipelines. These will support sustained collaboration and enable cumulative scientific progress across communities.

By bringing together these disciplines at a critical inflection point, the seminar aims to move the field beyond isolated demonstrations and establish neurophysiological information interaction as a coherent, interdisciplinary, and impactful research frontier. It will define the principles for the next generation of systems that do not merely react to user behavior, but understand, anticipate, and support human cognition in real-world settings.

Creative Commons BY 4.0

Yashar Moshfeghi, Jacek Gwizdka, Sven Mayer, and Min Zhang

This seminar qualifies for Dagstuhl's LZI Junior Researchers program. Schloss Dagstuhl wishes to enable the participation of junior scientists with a specialisation fitting for this Dagstuhl Seminar, even if they are not on the radar of the organizers. Applications by outstanding junior scientists are possible until Friday, July 31, 2026.