Japan

Toshiharu Nakai, PhD received his PhD degree in bioimaging from the Graduate School of Kyoto University, School of Medicine, Japan in 1992. From 1993, he was a post-doctoral research fellow of the Lucas MRS/MRI Center at Stanford University School of Medicine and involved in developing magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging to visualize lactate metabolism. In 1996, he joined Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL), Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Japan, and initiated researches in functional neuroimaging technologies and cognitive neuroscience. In 2005, he moved to National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Ministry of Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan and started his researches to apply neuroimaging technologies to early detection of dementia. His major concern is development of neuroimaging applications using magnetic resonance imaging, including cognitive researches as well as fusion of neuroimaging technologies.

Sachiko Kiyama, Ph.D. (Reitaku University, Japan) is a research fellow with Neuroimaging & Informatics Lab at the National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Japan. She previously conducted psycho- and neurolinguistic experiments at the Graduate School of Languages and Cultures, Nagoya University, Japan for her postdoctoral fellowship. Her main research interest lies generally in how humans interact with each other using language, and more specifically in perception of pragmatic language use which requires cognitive inferential processes (i.e., guessing relation between ‘what is said’ and ‘what is intended’) utilizing methodologies including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalogram (EEG). Collaborations in which she is involved so far are intercultural, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary. She has been carrying out experiments on language processing in Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Fijian, and Kaqchikel Maya (spoken in Guatemala). Some of them compare young and elderly adults. In addition to those linguistic studies, she is currently engaged in investigations of age-related changes in cognitive functions and motor coordination.

Mitsunobu Kunimi is a research fellow at the National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology (NCGG), Aichi, Japan. He received his Ph.D. in Literature in 2009 from Kanazawa University, Ishikawa, Japan, and completed research experiences at Jin-ai University, Fukui, Japan and the Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Ishikawa, Japan. His specialty fields are experimental psychology and cognitive neuropsychology, especially visual perception and cognitive functions. He has been conducting research on aging. He has been involved in the development of an aging index of cognitive function using functional brain mapping. He has employed near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study age-related changes in BOLD signals during working memory tasks.

Epifanio Bagarinao is currently a designated associate professor of the Brain and Mind Research Center, Nagoya University in Japan. Prior to joining the center, he was a research associate at the Systems Neuroscience and Pain Lab in the Division of Pain Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, where he worked on the development of a real-time fMRI system and its application to pain management. He was also actively involved in the analysis of neuroimaging datasets from different pain-related studies including the use of machine learning algorithms to detect chronic pelvic pain and analysis of resting state functional MRI to characterize neuropathic pain. Previously, he worked at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan and did research on topics related to real-time functional MRI, advance medical applications of grid technology, pattern classification using support vector machines, and the use of nonlinear dynamics theoretic approach to time series analysis. Dr. Bagarinao obtained his Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics and Master of Science in Physics from the University of the Philippines and his Doctor of Science in Biophysical Engineering from Osaka University in Japan.

Tetsuya Iidaka, MD., Ph.D. (University of Tsukuba, Japan) is an associate professor at the Department of Psychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya University, Japan. He began his medical career at the Department of Psychiatry, Kanto Teishin Hospital, Tokyo in 1984. From 1997, he spent two years at the Department of Psychology in the University of Toronto, Canada to conduct positron emission tomography (PET) studies to reveal aging effects on brain functions. He further continued to pursue higher brain functions utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at the Biomedical Imaging Research Center in Fukui University, Japan, before he was appointed associate professor of psychology at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies in Nagoya University in 2000. His main research area is neuroimaging in psychiatry. In particular, he is recently investigating face processing and recognition, functional anatomical connectivity, and cross-cultural imaging of social brain.

Atsunobu Suzuki is an experimental psychologist. After completing his doctoral degree at the University of Tokyo, he went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a postdoctoral fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, where he was engaged in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies examining face processing in younger and older adults. Having continued his postdoctoral research at the University of Tokyo, he joined the Nagoya University as an assistant professor; he is now an associate professor. His research interest is focused on social-affective cognitive processes (e.g., emotion perception from faces, learning and reasoning about others’ characters, and affect-based decision making). He is also interested in the effects of aging on these mental processes. Although his primary research method is behavioral experimentation with healthy adults, he has also been involved in studies using neural and physiological measures (e.g., fMRI) and those with clinical populations (e.g., Parkinson’s disease).

Yuichi Itoh is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Japan, and is majoring in cognitive psychology. Currently, he is employed as a research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He is interested in how people envision possible future events, which is termed episodic future thinking. He has researched phenomenological features or mechanisms of it with human behavioral studies and computational modeling based on neuropsychological data. He has been involved in some collaborations employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate reliability and nostalgia, and computational modeling to investigate reading process of Japanese kanji.

Yuichi Riku is a neuropathologist born in Japan. After completing his clinical neurology internship, he went on to the graduate school of Nagoya University, Department of Neurology. He also works as a guest researcher at Institute for Medical Science of Aging, Aichi Medical University. He investigates broad areas of neurological disorders from clinicopathological view points and particularly focuses on dementia syndromes and motor neuron diseases. His works concerned not only morphological pathology but also the correlations between pathological parameters and clinical features. Moreover, he contributed to establishment of Japanese clinicogenetical cohort of several rare neurodegenerative diseases, including Alexander disease and hereditary diffuse leukoencephalopathy with spheroids (HDLS).

Kaoru Amemiya is a cognitive neuroscientist. Her research interest is to understand the mechanisms of human plasticity, especially in motor learning and musical auditory learning. As a Ph. D. student in the University of Tokyo, she employed the Magnetoencephalography (MEG) to uncover the learning effect of music expectation. She also employed the functional MRI to elucidate the generalization effect of motor imagery learning. After she got a Ph.D. in medicine, she had started as a post-doctoral research career at Motor control and Rehabilitation Laboratory in Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) for two years. During this period, she engaged in research which tried to decode the human decision process underlying the motor intention using Electroencephalogram (EEG). From this spring, as a research fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, she tries to elucidate the unconscious decision process related with motor intention in order to develop a system of neurorehabilitation.

Singapore

Annabel SH Chen, Ph.D. is a faculty member in School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University since 2008. She received her PhD in Clinical Rehabilitation Psychology from Purdue University at Indianapolis. She worked at the Medical College of Wisconsin as a clinical Post-Doctoral Fellow, Stanford University School of Medicine as a research Post-Doctoral Affiliate, and held a position at the National Taiwan University as an Assistant Professor before joining NTU. She is a clinical neuropsychologist with a diverse background in clinical psychology (licensed in California, USA), and she has worked with both adult and child populations. She has conducted animal drug studies, human clinical, and experimental neuropsychological research, including cognitive rehabilitation. Her research focus is in applying functional neuroimaging to better understand neural systems involved in cognitive processes in normal and clinical adult populations. She has used Positron Emission Tomography (PET) to study patients with post-concussion sequelae from mild traumatic brain injury, and has been involved in functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) research examining language processing, executive functions, and affective memory in healthy and clinical populations (e.g. stroke, anxiety, schizophrenia), as well as, assessing neural systems used in motor timing/timing perception in patients with Parkinson's Disease.

Belle Y. Y. Yick, Ph.D. is currently a New Frontiers in Neuroscience Cluster Post-Doctoral Fellow in Nanyang Technological University under the supervision of Associate Professor Annabel Chen. After graduating from Cardiff University, she completed her Ph.D. under the mentorship of Professor Ed Wilding in Cardiff University investigating the recognition memory for faces using ERPs. She then worked as a Post-Doc Research Associate in Dr. Alex Schaefer’s lab in Durham University investigating the effect of emotion in mediating recognition memory using ERPs before joining the University of Hong Kong as a Post-Doc Fellow in Dr Kam Chi-Ming’s lab, investigating the development of executive functions and emotion regulation. Her research interest is in human recognition memory and she uses behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures to study the mechanisms for memory encoding and retrieval. She is particularly interested in how the encoding and retrieval processes differ according to whether the memory is recovered with or without detailed contextual information (recollection vs. familiarity). Currently, she is investigating age-related changes in these memory processes and the effect of memory training on cognitive functions and neural plasticity.

Goi Khia Eng is a Ph.D. candidate at the Nanyang Technological University. She obtained her Bachelor degree of Social Sciences in the Department of Psychology at National University of Singapore. Before joining Associate Professor Annabel Chen’s lab in NTU, she worked as a research psychologist in the Institute of Mental Health, Research Division. Her research interest lies in cognition and neuropsychology. She is interested in the application of neuroimaging techniques to investigate neural substrates and cognition in patients with psychiatric disorders. Her current PhD study is investigating the neural basis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Fumihiko Taya, Ph.D. is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Singapore Institute for Neurotechnology (SINAPSE), National University of Singapore (NUS). He took his Ph.D. in the course of biosignaling at Medical School of Osaka University, and his MSE in the computer science at Department of Science and Engineering, Keio University. Prior to the current position, he worked at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc., Japan, and Centre for Advanced Research on Logic and Sensibility, The Global Centers for Excellence Program, Keio University, Japan. He works in the area of cognitive neuroscience, and studies on human cognitive functions such as cognitive control, executive function, learning, memory, and decision making using fMRI and EEG. His research interests include cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging, network science and reinforcement learning theory.

Yu SUN, Ph.D. received the B. Eng. Degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), China in 2005 and Ph.D. degree in Electronic, Electrical & System Engineering from Loughborough University (LU), UK in 2011 and Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), China in 2012. Currently, Yu SUN is a Research Fellow in the Singapore Institute for Neurotechnology (SINAPSE) at the National University of Singapore. His research interests are in neural signal processing, and neuroimage processing. In particular, he is interested in investigating the connectivity network patterns from different modalities at different cognitive or psychological states.

Julian Ziqiang Lim, Ph.D. is a Research Scientist in the Cognitive Engineering group in the Singapore Institute for Neurotechnology (SINAPSE). He graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in Psychology (Neuroscience) and from the University of Pennsylvania with a PhD in Clinical Psychology under the mentorship of Dr. David Dinges. His doctoral research focused primarily on sleep deprivation, in particular using functional magnetic resonance imaging to understand its neurocognitive effects. His current research interests include 1) the effects of fatigue and high mental workload on the brain, and using a multimodal approach to investigate individual differences in these phenomena. 2) the effects of emotional induction on moral decision-making.