Preface
January 2014


Although there are some serious international political problems involving Japan, we had very good news last September, as Tokyo was selected as the Olympic city for 2020. With a surprising increase in stock prices, economic conditions seem to be gradually improving in Japan. We hope that this economic trend will continue toward 2020, and also sincerely hope that the international political problems will be resolved soon and Japan will force strong friendships with all countries of the world.

It is always a great pleasure for us to send the annual report of our department to our friends. This bulletin includes 23 papers that were published in 2013 or are currently in press. Reading these articles will demonstrate what and how we are doing. The scientific fields include evoked magnetic fields following visual, auditory, somatosensory, pain, and itch stimuli. In addition, we are studying the perception mechanisms of higher brain functions related to facial, visual motion, etc.

You can see the wide range of research themes in our department, including not only MEG and EEG, but also fMRI and NIRS.

Cooperative studies with other laboratories have been very fruitful this year, particularly with Chuo University (Tokyo, Japan, Prof. Yamaguchi), Mie University (Tsu, Japan, Dr. Motomura and colleagues), Waseda University (Tokyo, Dr. Kida), Nara Womenfs Univeristy (Nara, Dr. Nakata), Aichi Medical University (Prof. Ushida and Dr. Nishihara), Kobe University (Dr. Noguchi), Chiba University (Prof. Kuwabara, Dr. Omori and Dr. Isose), Heidelberg University (Heidelberg, Germany, Prof. Treede), and Munster University (Munster, Germany, Prof. Pantev). I am very grateful to these researchers on behalf of the colleagues in my department.



With best regards,


Ryusuke Kakigi, M.D., Ph.D.,
Professor and Chairperson,
Department of Integrative Physiology,
National Institute for Physiological Sciences,
38 Nishigo-Naka, Myodaiji, Okazaki,
444-8585, JAPAN.
Tel: +81-564-55-7751
Fax: +81-564-52-7913,
E-mail: kakigi@nips.ac.jp
URL: http://www.nips.ac.jp/smf/

Main research subjects at present
iScientific fields that we are focusing on now are as follows:j

  1. Somatosensory evoked magnetic fields (SEFs) and potentials (SEPs), mainly the generating mechanisms for short-latency components, long-latency components related to perception, and pre-movement gating effect.
  2. Pain-related SEFs and SEPs, using laser pulse and epidermal needle stimulation, mainly on the effect of sleep, attention/distraction and movement. SEFs and SEPs generated by signals ascending through unmyelinated C fibers.
  3. Psychophysical and neurophysiological studies on the underlying mechanisms for two-point discrimination.
  4. Visual evoked magnetic fields (VEFs) related to motion perception.
  5. VEFs related to face perception.
  6. VEFs related to neural adaptation.
  7. Auditory evoked magnetic fields (AEFs) related to music, human voice perception and the effect of habituation & surround inhibition.
  8. Event-related magnetic fields and potentials related to language perception.
  9. Mismatch magnetic fields.

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