PublicationsPress Releases
This page compiles official press releases from university websites for research outcomes in which Tsuyoshi Okamoto was directly involved (including those before the laboratory was established). For the laboratory activity log since April 2025, please see News.
Delicious meals awaken the brain! (Japanese only)
A research group including graduate student Hongjia Li (Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences, Kyushu University), Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Okamoto (Institute for Advanced Study of Education / Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences), and Nichirei Foods Inc. investigated how “delicious meals” affect post-meal cognitive processing, motivation, and work efficiency, using EEG and a frontal EEG balance measure.
Short training regimen improves long-term memory (Official Japanese release)
A research group led by Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Okamoto (Institute for Advanced Study of Education, Kyushu University) and doctoral student YuHsuan Tseng (Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences) demonstrated that a brief three-day EEG training regimen can improve long-term memory.
Air conditioning comfort depends on wind direction (Official Japanese release)
A group led by Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Okamoto (Institute for Advanced Study of Education, Kyushu University) showed that the “wind direction setting” of air conditioning affects not only the local thermal environment around a person, but also the person’s subjective comfort evaluation, psychological responses, and physiological responses.
Related press release from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Thermal Systems: Neuroscientific evidence that airflow direction affects cooling comfort (Japanese only)
Smelling citrus odors impairs memory for the color orange: indiscriminate fragrance use may backfire (Japanese only)
A team including specially appointed assistant professor Kaori Tamura and Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Okamoto (Institute for Advanced Study of Education, Kyushu University) and doctoral student Masayuki Hamakawa (Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences) found that an odor component in citrus fruits can make it harder to memorize the color orange, suggesting that adding fragrance indiscriminately may have unintended negative effects.
When “it smells nice but I dislike it” or “it smells bad but I like it”: effects of mismatched emotion and olfactory preference (Japanese only)
Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Okamoto (Institute for Advanced Study of Education, Kyushu University) and doctoral student Masayuki Hamakawa (Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences) examined perceptual characteristics of odors that elicit mismatched innate and learned emotional responses—such as “smells nice but I dislike it” or “smells bad but I like it.”
World first: unveiling how airflow from heating and cooling systems affects brain activity (Japanese only)
Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Okamoto (Institute for Advanced Study of Education, Kyushu University; formerly Associate Professor, Faculty of Medical Sciences at the start of the project) collaborated with Takaharu Futatsueda (KFT Co., Ltd. / Anny Group) to reveal, for the first time, how airflow produced by heating and cooling systems affects brain activity.
A new hypothesis on functional organization of the primary visual cortex: computational prediction of segregated structures for local vs. broader scene processing
Associate Professor Tsuyoshi Okamoto (Faculty of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University) collaborated with Professor Ichiro Fujita (Osaka University), Professor Kazuyuki Aihara (The University of Tokyo), and colleagues to conduct computer simulations using experimental data and predicted a new structural organization underlying orientation detection of fine image details in the primary visual cortex during shape perception.
First published: February 18, 2020.
Major revision: February 20, 2026.
Last updated: April 15, 2026.
