Cognitive Neuroscience

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITIONS:
2004-present; Head, Laboratory for Symbolic Cognitive Development, RIKEN Brain Science Institute
2006-present; Member, Science Council of Japan
2009-present; Adjunct Professor, Keio University
2010-present; Visiting Professor, University College London

EDUCATION:
DDS 1982 (Tokyo Medical and Dental University, #2013)
PhD 1986 (Tokyo Medical and Dental University, #544)
DMSc 1991 (Toho University, #1521)

MEMBERSHIPS:
Society for Neuroscience
Japan Neuroscience Society
The Physiological Society of Japan

AWARDS:
2004 The Golden Brain Award (The Minerva Foundation, Berkeley CA, USA)
2008 The Creative Research Award (Neurocreative NPO, Japan)
2009 The Otto-Creutzfeldt-Lecture (German Neuroscience Society, Berlin)

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
We try to uncover evolutionary precursors of human higher cognitive functions grounded onto physical morphologies and patterns of structured bodily actions, based on behavioral and neurophysiological analyses on chronic macaque monkeys, which were trained to use tools and other high-tech apparatus. By sharing these machineries among individuals, we extrapolate the mechanisms to constitute bases of communicatory functions, and eventually understand neural mechanism to form intellectual and alstristic society to comprise humanistic civilization environment. Further, we are aiming at elucidating neurobiological mechanisms, through the development of Marmoset experimental models, of evolutionary as well as developmental processes that give rise to symbolic cognitive functions subserving inference, metaphysical thoughts, etc. that characterize human intelligence.

Research projects:
1. Learning-induced expansion of primates' cerebral cortex and neural response properties
2. Interactions among multiple agents as bases of intellectual environment
3. Marmoset as a primate model to reveal neurobiological mechanisms of human intellectual evolution
4. Cortical information processing of human-specific cognitive bias