Laboratory Guide

OKAMOTO Tsuyoshi Laboratory, Kyushu University was established in October 2013, and has been led by Dr. Okamoto, an active brain scientist, neuroscientist, medical engineer, and data scientist. Our research targets are the human brain, and because of the wide range of things we aim to do and themes we deal with, we have been describing our research field as "Human Brain Functions" since November 2019.

Since joining Kyushu University from the University of Tokyo, Dr. Okamoto has conducted collaborative research with numerous researchers, companies, and local governments. He has also planned, managed, and operated various research projects while supervising students. As of October 1, 2013, he became a principal investigator of this laboratory in the Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences. On this page, we aim to provide a brief overview of our laboratory's research focus and opportunities for collaboration or joining our team. While we encourage you to explore our "Content of Our Research" and "Collaboration" pages, please note that our laboratory is constantly evolving, and the information on our website may not always be up-to-date. For the latest updates on Dr. Okamoto's thoughts and policies, we suggest checking the "Notes" section as well.

Our laboratory is dedicated to both basic and applied research in brain science. Our primary motivation is to unravel the complex mechanisms underlying information processing in the brain, which is a crucial component of human activities and gives rise to all academic disciplines. Despite its central importance to human experience, the brain remains as mysterious as the universe itself. Our approach focuses primarily on the sensory system, exploring how the brain responds to and interprets external stimuli. While understanding the true feelings of others can be challenging, there are many similarities in sensory responses across humans and other organisms, such as sight, hearing, smell, and temperature sensation. By investigating these similarities, we aim to shed light on the brain's functions and mechanisms.

In our laboratory, we are pursuing the elucidation of sensory information processing mechanisms, while expanding our interest to various senses such as vision, hearing, somatosensation, olfaction, and thermal sensation. Recently, experimental research has become the main stream of our laboratory, but the ideal research flow is to design and conduct experiments, analyze and statistically validate experimental data, mathematically and computationally model the experimental results, and explain the mechanisms by reproducing and predicting brain activity through computer simulation. If experimental research is the main focus, after analyzing and statistically validating the experimental data, it is often concluded by considering the mechanism of the phenomenon, but there should be a step beyond the experiment, which is modeling and simulation. I think that we should advance to that step to achieve the "elucidation of mechanisms" (and I can also provide guidance on those steps!).

In addition to conducting fundamental neuroscience research on sensory information processing, as mentioned above, we also want to conduct applied research to disseminate our research results to industry and society. In recent years, we have also been working on neuroscience-based evaluation studies of odors and thermal environments. The former involves evaluating smells of various products and environments from a neuroscientific perspective and developing fragrances with specific functions. In fact, there are very few research laboratories in Japan and overseas that combine brain function measurement in humans with odor evaluation. The latter involves evaluating comfort based on how the brain and nervous system respond in a given environment, which differs from conventional comfort evaluation studies that seek indicators of comfort from physical elements such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed. We are actively pursuing collaborative research with companies to propose comfortable and energy-efficient living environments as one way to alleviate power shortages. In the future, we hope to explain the mechanisms by which the brain perceives odors and thermal environments as comfortable using mathematical and computational models.

Recently, there has been active development in neurofeedback to improve higher brain functions such as thinking and creativity, as well as motor functions, and research using artificial intelligence technology to understand the brain.

We welcome students who have the motivation and enthusiasm to explore brain function through experiments, analysis, and theory, as well as those who focus solely on experimentation. We especially welcome students with ambitious goals who want to surprise the world. While neuroscience is a highly competitive field with many researchers worldwide, it is still a developing discipline with plenty of room for innovation. There are many diverse and flexible approaches, and we encourage the development of original research methods with creative thinking. We will work together diligently and thoroughly to pioneer the frontier of neuroscience.

Please note that degree examinations and other evaluations are conducted jointly with Iramina Laboratory and Lauwereyns Laboratory.

Dr. Tsuyoshi Okamoto, Principal Investigator

First published on August 13, 2014.
Last modified on March 24, 2023.