Hiring: I am starting a lab at the University of California, Davis from March 2018, and looking for postdocs/students to work with. Please contact me if you are interested in.
E-mail: satohiro.tajima [at] gmail.com
Probably, everyone has ever wondered what makes us perceive the world consciously, why we recognize things in “this” way, when those experiences began and how they will end. These questions concern our subjective experiences. What is necessary to answer those questions in a scientific manner? — I use mathematical tools to bridge the theoretical models of brain functions and the empirical data obtained in the behavioral/physiological experiments. A challenge here is that the brain has highly complex dynamics, for which the entire governing equations are often unclear. A key strategy I take is to combine two contrastive approaches:
the theory-driven (“top-down”) approaches to derive the necessary components of brain dynamics to achieve desired functions, and
the data-driven (“bottom-up”) methodologies to extract the structures existing within the real brain dynamics.
In my lab, I integrate those “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches to study three basic aspects of cognition:
“contents” (e.g., how we perceive the world with such a richness and flexibility; for example, imagine the experiences of textures or colors with a variety of categories),
“levels” (e.g., how/why we lose those conscious experiences in deep sleep, anesthesia, or severe brain injuries), and
“functions” (e.g., how we decide to choose our actions based on the current perceptions of the world and the expectations for future rewards).
I investigate those three topics particularly focusing on the topological/geometric aspects of brain dynamics.
Driven by my desire to understand the mechanistic principles of the human cognitions, I started my career in the field of engineering, where I modeled how our brain process the visual information in the uncertain world. During my four year works at a broadcasting industry, I translated some of the insights in the vision sciences to the development video processing technologies. Returning to the basic science, I have been studying theories of visual perception, decision-making and consciousness, as well as developing a variety of practical methods for analyzing high-dimensional brain dynamics data. My ultimate goal is to contribute the theoretical insights obtained through my researches to clinical applications and the developments of intelligent systems working together with humans.