Neuroscience is a fascinating and promising field of research in which much remains unknown. For example, many of the neural mechanisms underlying motivation, decision-making, and attention, which are our primary research interests, are still an enigma; a comparison of textbooks written 10 years ago with state-of-the-art findings shows a stark difference. The next decade will bring similar, if more rapid, advances in our understanding.

Researchers with diverse academic backgrounds can change the conventional wisdom of neuroscience with relative ease by successfully integrating their respective cutting-edge wisdom. If the conventional wisdom of understanding brain function can be changed, the conventional wisdom of understanding the pathophysiology of mental disorders, and ultimately their diagnosis and treatment, will be changed. It will also lead to the development of better artificial intelligence. In other words, the impact on society will be great. We aim to conduct such "innovative" research that will "transform" common sense. Therefore, to join our laboratory, we do not require specific background or prior knowledge in medicine, informatics, psychology, life science, engineering, etc., but we do expect "enthusiasm to pioneer new neuroscience by taking advantage of your personal characteristics".

We are particularly interested in research that combines research on biological entities such as neurons and neural circuits that make up the brain with informatics and computational science in an interactive manner. For example, we will compare theories such as reinforcement learning, which can explain goal-directed behavior, with the actual behaviors and neural activities of animals that we measure. As a result, we aim to elucidate the functional significance of biological entities in a data-driven manner and contribute to the construction of new theories. Our specialty is biology, and our research strengths lie in the integration of advanced neural activity measurement and manipulation methods with original behavioral tasks. In addition, we are collaborating with researchers in the field of information and computational science (e.g., Prof. Naoki Honda at Hiroshima University). In the future, we intend to expand our collaborative research to include interactive translational research with humans using animal models of pathological conditions such as stress, and brain imaging research on human psychiatric disorders.

So far, Prof. Ogawa has provided a forum for brain and neuroscience researchers to interact across departmental boundaries by launching the "Salon du Brain", a neuroscience seminar at Kyoto University. We hope to promote original research worldwide by utilizing the various research networks we have developed with Japan and other countries.

Our entire laboratory will support graduate students who are going to participate in the program so that we can nurture "unique" individuals who will lead the field of brain and neuroscience in the future.

If you are interested, please feel free to contact Ogawa (e-mail below). 

ogawam at belle.shiga-med.ac.jp

Please see the following information on "International Student's Life" for reference.

https://www.shiga-med.ac.jp/en/international-student-life