Yuko Yotsumoto, Ph.D.
professor
Dr. Yotsumoto is a professor in the Department of Life Sciences, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo. Prior to her current position, she worked at Keio University, Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston University. She earned her PhD in psychology in 2005 at Brandeis University.
Elisa M.Gallego-Hiroyasu
Doctoral Student
Without a clock, we are capable of timing our daily schedule or even keeping track of the seconds of our lives to synchronize movements to the sensory stimuli around us. But how do we do that? Not much is known about the function of specific brain areas implicated in timing and therefore, I am further exploring the roles of the cerebellum and basal ganglia in explicit and implicit sub-second rhythmic timing by working with patients with Parkinson' s disease.
Amirmahmoud Houshmand Chatroudi
Doctoral Student
Brain is a multi-gear oscillatory machine: different modes of cognitive process summon different activation patterns across neural ensembles near and far. In my research, I seek to answer how brain's oscillatory structure enables our integrated cognition by investigating its role in transmission of sensory information, spatial and temporal perception, and storage of memory traces. EEG, tACS and fMRI are the main methodologies I use to answer this question.
Teruaki Kido
Doctoral Student
In the environment, there are a lot of visual or auditory stimuli and the characteristics of these stimuli gets processed in our brain. Sometimes, these have temporal information, and we can process the temporal information embedded in the stimuli. I am currently exploring how we can process multiple intervals simultaneously by using behavioral tasks since I am interested in the properties of neural system for interval processing.
Wei Chen
Doctoral Student
How do we understand what is a “goal”, a “method” or “time”? I am interested in exploring how the neural representation of semantic, verbal and sensory information connects to the understanding of a concept in our brain. Is it just clusters of information, how are they organized, and finally, can we reproduce it in a silicon chip?
Taku Otsuka
Master's Student
We receive various sensory information through sensory organs and behave through processing them in the brain. However, there is no specific sensory organ for the perception of elapsed time. Considering the time perception may be deeply related to multisensory information integration including the somatosensory system, I’m planning to conduct research using psychophysical methods and virtual reality devices.
Syogo Sugiyama
Master's Student
A human brain is a sophisticated calculator which can process overwhelming amount of information, but it sometimes makes mistakes such as optical illusion. I am interested in this functional relationships between an objective fact and a subjective perception, so I study psychology and neuroscience. Now I am focusing on the ability of brains to integrate a lot of information iuput from various modalities like time perception and sense of agency, and trying to unveil the nature of human brains.
Tamaka Harada
Master's Student
In the subjective world of mine, my consciousness exists, whereas I cannot say for sure yours exists, which makes “me” unique and special to me. Many research findings have also supported the claim that humans’ representation of the self is “special” and realized by systems that are distinct from those used for more general purposes. I seek to study neural underpinnings and evolutionary history of the human brain’s ability to distinguish self from others through behavioral experiments and functional neuroimaging techniques.
Hana Hinohara
Master's Student
“Time flies while you are having fun.” Our time perception depends on the environment. I’m interested in the situation which influences the time perception and the brain activity while such changes happens. I’m planning to investigate by using behavioral tasks and stimulators.
Kazuki Naito
Master's Student
We can perceive stimuli such as sound and light with our sensory organs, such as the eyes and ears. In contrast, however, no corresponding sensory organ or brain region has been discovered for the perception of time. How then do we perceive time? I would like to study the mechanism of time perception through behavioral experiments.
Takeru Okumura
4th Year Student
How VR-condition affects our cognition? For example, a research reports that time is felt to pass more quickly while playing a VR-game. It is said that our internal rhythm is related to such a phenomenon. However, there is room for further investigation. I am now working on creating stimuli for VR-condition with Unity. I want to research time-perception in VR-condition, by using stimuli I made.
Yasuko Takayama
4th Year Student
Just as you feel the same hour longer or shorter, Perception can change depending on the environment, and vary from person to person. Even so, there is some consistency that enable everyday communication, and some generalizations are possible. I am interested in such aspects of perception and would like to learn more about how it works through research.
Koki Shirasawa
3rd Year Student
We make a variety of sensory judgments, such as “beautiful” or “fashionable,” in response to visual stimuli such as landscapes, paintings, and designs. Sometimes we prefer visual stimuli that at first glance appear to be unfavorable. I am interested in the mechanisms involved in these sensory judgments and would like to conduct research using behavioral experiments and functional neuroimaging techniques.
Ken Takeda
3rd Year Student
Is the red that I see the same as the red that others see? It is not easy to directly compare the quality of consciousness itself (qualia) produced by visual experiences. However, we can examine the degree of similarity by focusing on the relationships. Through the analysis of behavioral and neural activity data, I would like to advance my research on methodologies to characterize the quality of consciousness.
Naoaya Tachibana
3rd Year Student
One of the human natures is rhythm with repeated activity and rest, such as sleep-wake cycle and the coordinated contraction of muscles during exercise. These constant rhythmic activities are caused by the entrainment of neurons in the brain, which are synchronized in a specific frequency band. I am interested in this kind of synchronization having various effects on sensation and cognition, and want to study it through psychophysical behavioral experiments and EEG measurements.