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.
Yusuke Haruki
Research Fellow (PD),
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
I am interested in how interoception—the process by which the nervous system senses, integrates, and interprets internal bodily signals—becomes part of our awareness and shapes our mind. During my Ph.D. studies, I used neuroimaging techniques to illustrate the neural mechanisms underlying interoceptive awareness. Currently, I am expanding my research to broader topics in cognitive science, such as subjective time, first-person perspective, and the sense of self, to uncover the mysteries of subjectivity.(ResearchMap)
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
Our perception is flexibly altered based on prior experiences and the goals of our actions. How is external information represented in the brain during these processes? I am studying the neural representations of information and their relationship to context, particularly in the perception of magnitude such as space, number, and time, using behavioral experiments and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
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
Doctoral 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.
Rei Takahashi
Master's Student
Although light and sound are different physical phenomena, our brain can measure and compare these durations. It was also reported that multisensory time information are perceived with interaction. I am interested in a mechanism of time perception, especially a mechanism to integrate multisensory information of time. I would like to investigate it using behavioral experiments and brain activity measurements.
Ryosei Fujimoto
Master's Student
The "self" is something that we take for granted, and it seems that we can never separate it from ourselves. How do this perception and cognition of self arise, and how do they influence our subjective experience? I would like to study the process of self-recognition and its relation to our perception and cognition through behavioral experiments and functional neuroimaging techniques.
Naoaya Tachibana
4th 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.
Biora Oshima
4th Year Student
We make judgments based on predictions and inferences in various everyday situations, such as when recognizing something in front of us or catching a ball, and these judgments are influenced by both on-the-spot sensory input and knowledge from past experiences. I am interested in how these integrations are achieved in human perception and motor learning, and would like to study it using behavioral experiments and models.
Chika Goto
4th Year Student
It is known that our subjective time perception varies depending on various factors such as situations we are in, sensory modalities, or aging. I would like to study how temporal information is processed by each sensory organ and what factors affect this processing through behavioral experiments and statistical modeling.
Yu Togashi
4th Year Student
It is well known that the answer to the question of how many colors there are in a rainbow differs from culture to culture. From this fact, it can be hypothesized that the quality of our conscious experience, known as 'qualia', may be influenced by language, culture, or development.I believe that the phenomenon of synesthesia, in which an inducer leads to concurrent perception, is insightful for the hypothesis mentioned above. I aim to investigate the mapping between the perceptual or semantic structure of the inducer and the concurrent experience of synesthesia, such as grapheme-color synesthesia, as a means to elucidate the mechanism of shaping qualia.
Takeya Oda
3rd Year Student
We appreciate art and find beauty in it. However, can we say with certainty that the work you have experienced is perceived in exactly the same way by others? When we ponder this question, we are reminded that the world we believe to be present before us is, in a sense, a subjective estimate. What makes it possible for us to predict and interpret the external world is the dynamic processing of various sensory information by the brain. I focus on the brain's hierarchical processing, specifically aiming to shed light on the selective information processing in higher cortical areas and the mechanisms of integration between different sensory modalities.