Humans can manipulate tools in order to achieve their life goals. After we become familiar with using any tool, the tool feels as if it is a part of our own body. Therefore, it might be possible to design a tool that is easy to use and operate, similar to a body part, because the body itself is the most “easy-to-use” tool. However, to date, it has been unclear how to objectively evaluate whether a tool could feel like a part of our body. This study investigated the neural basis of the feeling, “like my body,” as an objective index. In particular, we focused on the specific time window (0–50 seconds) in which the body representations update when introducing the rubber hand illusion, which is the illusory ownership of a dummy hand as a part of our own body. This study demonstrated mu suppression in the left parietal region during the focusing period. This finding suggests that this component of the electroencephalogram could be used in human engineering approaches for designing “easy-to-use” tools.

We measured the skin conductance and subjective scales of 48 college students during classes involving conventional lectures, in-class experiments, and discussions. During a lecture, we provided an overview of skin conductance. The in-class experiment consisted of a toy-gun shooting game. The in-class discussion consisted of the social application of psychophysiological measurements. Results indicated that the skin conductance of participants gradually decreased as the lecture progressed, but became remarkably high during the discussion. The subjective assessment of the class by students was generally positive, except for the lecture. The psychophysiological and subjective scale responses of the students were correlated only during in-class experiment, but the correlation was lost during the lecture and the discussion, possibly because of difficulties in the awareness of the level of physiological arousal and the anxiety caused by the interpersonal situation, respectively. The possibilities and problems of applying multi-person measurements of psychophysiological activities in educational settings are discussed.

The polygraph test is an applied psychophysiological technique. This paper describes the psychophysiological foundations of the polygraph test to illustrate the “real-world applications of psychophysiology.” Current practices of polygraph testing in Japan use the concealed information test (CIT) for detecting information, which is a practice that is unique to Japan. The CIT relies on psychophysiological findings, including basic findings that do not focus on applied settings. However, some of application-oriented studies of the CIT have little practical relevance due to shortage of knowledge about practical situations. In future research, more emphasis should be placed on the generalization of findings or being grounded by knowledge about situations where a technique is used. Finally, the possibilities and challenges facing Japanese psychophysiological research are discussed.