New open-science consortium seeks to quantify joy as a biological input with real and measurable healthspan relevance.
Frontier Towers, San Francisco, has become an unexpectedly apt setting for an experiment that edges longevity medicine into new conceptual terrain. A consortium featuring neurotechnology firms, AI platforms, decentralised research groups and what might broadly be termed the city’s evidence-inclined biohacking community has launched what it calls the first attempt to create a unified metric for joy, connection and synchrony. The initiative, known as JoyScore, draws on the growing body of research that positions social and emotional experiences as influential modulators of stress biology, mitochondrial resilience and immune tone. Developers hope that a framework capable of quantifying these effects could sit alongside familiar measures such as step count, HRV and sleep score, although such ambition will, inevitably, require robust data.
Longevity.Technology: Joy has always been treated as longevity’s charming afterthought – pleasant enough, but hardly the stuff of serious biomarkers – yet the evidence has been mounting that our emotional and social lives exert biological pressure every bit as real as a disrupted circadian rhythm or a pro-inflammatory diet. The decision to treat connection, synchrony and collective effervescence as quantifiable exposures reflects a field finally catching up with its own data; loneliness is now understood to shift mortality curves, influence immune tone and fray mitochondrial resilience, yet until now we have had no metric to hold these forces to account. A JoyScore may sound disconcertingly whimsical to those schooled in methylation panels and multi-omics dashboards, but the underlying premise is anything but soft – if the experiences that make life feel worth living measurably modulate biological wear-and-tear, then ignoring them is simply bad science.
What this initiative hints at, rather provocatively, is a future in which experiential health design sits alongside molecules and machines in the longevity toolkit – soundscapes, movement patterns and engineered synchrony may become prescribed exposures rather than fringe curiosities, and insurers may one day find themselves reimbursing interventions that look suspiciously like joy. There is, of course, a risk that an enthusiasm for quantifying the ineffable slides into overreach, yet open-science collaborations such as this one create space for the field to separate signal from sentiment and to explore whether affective biomarkers can hold their own against more established measures. If JoyScore can withstand scientific scrutiny and escape the gravitational pull of wellness gimmickry, it may help steer longevity toward a more human-centered horizon – one in which flourishing is not merely a byproduct of good health but a contributor to it.
Developing a new class of exposures
The project’s scientific rationale draws on familiar findings in geroscience, but extends them into territory that many clinicians still regard as secondary. Loneliness has been repeatedly associated with higher mortality risk and is often likened to the physiological impact of smoking 15 cigarettes a day; chronic social disconnection is linked to elevated inflammation, disrupted sleep architecture and shortened telomeres. Conversely, synchrony, music and collective movement have shown effects on bonding, pain tolerance and emotion regulation. This gives the consortium some justification for treating emotional uplift and shared experience as modifiable exposures with biological weight – although demonstrating quantifiable healthspan benefits will require careful measurement rather than optimistic inference.
To that end, participants in the initial two-night protocol will wear AWEAR’s single-ear EEG sensors to capture brainwave patterns associated with emotional states, while blood and metabolic markers will be taken to assess oxytocin, CRP, GDF15 and other indicators of stress and recovery. Additional streams come from Blēo, Humanity Health and Rejuve.ai, providing a mix of physiological, neurophysiological and algorithmic insights. The first night will establish baseline responses in a low-stimulus environment, while the second will introduce a deliberately structured “Science Rave” incorporating rhythmic entrainment and synchronised movement. The contrast, researchers say, should reveal whether engineered connection produces measurable shifts in neurochemistry and recovery.
Speaking about the broader shift this represents, AWEAR’s founder Dr Antonio Forenza said: “The next frontier in longevity isn’t just molecules – it’s emotional wellbeing. JoyScore is a way to measure and engineer the experiences that keep us alive longer, healthier and happier.”
Shifting attention to connection
Although longevity investment continues to favor molecules, wearables and biological age clocks, some in the sector argue that these tools overlook dimensions of health that matter both biologically and experientially. “The longevity field has obsessively measured everything except the things that make life worth living: joy, connection, belonging, community. JoyScore could help to design and incentivize next generation products and services that matter most to us,” says Tina Woods, who leads the study through Longevity Rave and Collider Health. Her framing reflects a broader concern that quantitative models of aging risk omitting what many aging individuals describe as central to their wellbeing.
Partners in the initiative occupy distinct niches – AWEAR has focused on making real-world EEG feasible for cognitive and emotional state measurement, while OpenCures acts as a citizen-science enabler for preventive trials. Humanity Health contributes large-scale biological age data, and The Sound Nutritionists bring expertise in psychoacoustics and sensory design. It is an eclectic mix, but one that reflects the sector’s growing conviction that healthspan is shaped by more than molecular trajectories. Whether this fusion of neuroscience, sound engineering and social design can translate into a reproducible metric remains an open question, although it is a question the consortium seems determined to examine in public view rather than behind closed doors.
Rejuve.ai CEO Jasmine Smith said the rise of AI makes this shift all the more timely. “At a time when technology, and especially AI, is taking over our professional and personal lives, we need ways to incentivize and reward those elements of our lives that fulfil our human need for love, connection, meaning and purpose,” she said.
A more expansive view of healthspan
The implications of a validated JoyScore would be far-reaching. Experience designers, hospitality groups and wellness operators could, in theory, build environments calibrated to support emotional recovery; insurers assessing preventive interventions might be required to consider whether collective experiences influence biological aging; and AI platforms could start to integrate emotional-state data into risk models. None of this is guaranteed, of course, but the act of testing the hypothesis signals a willingness to broaden longevity’s operational boundaries. The field has become adept at counting steps and sequencing genomes; whether it can learn to count the physiological echoes of joy is a question now moving from the philosophical to the empirical.
Reflecting on how such a metric might shift public understanding, Professor Michael Sagner of Southeastern University Florida and Clinical Advisor, and King’s College’s Ageing Research (ARK), said: “Just like sleep score changed how we think about sleep, and step counts changed how we think about movement, we want JoyScore to change how we think about human connection, emotions, and flourishing. Art can indeed be medicine.”
Toward a richer model of living well
If JoyScore gains traction, it may influence not just how we measure health but how we conceive of wellbeing across the lifespan. Longevity medicine has, at times, been accused of privileging molecular precision over human experience; efforts such as this suggest a shift toward a more integrated model in which emotional and social environments are not externalities but components of healthy aging. As research continues, the challenge will be to maintain scientific rigor while embracing the possibility that some of the most potent longevity interventions may also be the most familiar.
