Is brain research really good for anything? Is brain research really good for anything? Cognitive neuroscience elucidates the mysteries of the human mind and behavior as a combination of information processing (cognitive processes) in the brain. To utilize this research field to address social challenges arising from issues of the mind, researchers from various fields and parties in the field gather to create "collective knowledge" that integrates diverse humanities and natural sciences, and to develop human resources in this field. We welcome your participation in various ways, including organizing research meetings, conducting joint research, and enrolling in graduate school. Upcoming events List 202603.07Event A symposium of Japan Second Language Acquisition Research Forum Japan Second Language Acquisition Research Forum (J-SLARF) is a group of researchers in Japan working and collaborating at international levels. Following our success last year, we will once again 202608.17Event fMRI Data Analysis Workshop 2026 fMRI Data Analysis Workshop Do you find yourself wondering "Where do I even begin?" or struggling to grasp the overall analysis flow after attempting self-study? This workshop is designed t Events List 202510.28Event [Seminar] Gestures, Language & Brain Dynamics How do gestures shape the way we understand and process language in the brain? This seminar invited you to explore the fascinating intersection of gesture, communication, and cognition through t 202510.24Publication How the brain learns meaning-based grammatical rules (Publication) How does the brain learn grammatical rules that are grounded in meaning rather than form? To address this question, we conducted an fMRI study to examine how people learn nominal 202510.16Event [Symposium] Understanding Mind and Society With the rapid development of computational science and psychological theory, researchers now have an increasingly diverse set of tools to explore the human mind and social phenomena. However, new opp 202510.11Event Katahira Matsuri Exhibition: Heart-Racing VR Heights: Discover the Brain’s Astonishing Response Date: October 11, 2025 (Saturday) Event: Katahira Festival 2025 Organizer: Human Brain Science Laboratory (Sugiura Lab) 【Overview】 At this year’s Katahira Festival 2025, the Sugiura Lab pr 202510.10Presentation Effects of Pain Catastrophizing on Pain-Related Resting-State Functional Connectivity(Poster Presentation at International Conference) People experience pain in different ways. These differences are influenced not only by physical factors but also by psychological tendencies such as pain catastrophizing (Pain Catastrophizin 202510.02Event 【Research Group】 The Horizon of Coexistence with Super-Intelligent AI Recent advances in AI intelligence have been remarkable, with the emergence of “general-purpose AI” expected to achieve human-level ‘intelligence’ in various domains, sparking 202509.18Presentation The Effect of Social Pressure on Facial Emotion Recognition in Lonely People and Its Neural Mechanism (ICON2025 Poster Presentation) The direction of the relation between facial emotion recognition and loneliness has been showed to be mixed in the previous literature. However, among those studies, some suggested lonely people actua 202509.17Presentation Social and Embodied Language Learning (Symposium at International Conference) I had the pleasure of co-organizing and presenting at a symposium at ICON 2025 – International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (Porto, Portugal, September 15–20, 2025). On 202509.16Presentation Distinct Neural Substrates of Visceral Expressions of Emotion (Poster Presentation at International Conference/Award-winning) Using fMRI, this study investigated how the neural processing of visceral expressions of emotion (e.g., 'heart fell apart') differs from that of general emotion labels non-specific to the body 202509.16Presentation Prosody Meets Context: fMRI Evidence of Intention Comprehension in Second Language Learners (Poster Presentation at International Conference) In this experiment on second language (L2) intention comprehension, we examined how L2 learners process communicative intentions when congruent or incongruent prosody was combined with predictable or 202509.16Presentation Neural mechanism of predictive sentence processing (Poster Presentation at the International Conference) Using fMRI, we investigated brain activity during Korean sentence processing. The results revealed that the left-lateralized language network dynamically resolves prediction errors in syntax and thema 202509.16Presentation Do you feel pain after being rejected? (Poster Presentation at the International Conference) Social rejection is not only emotionally painful but also activates some of the same brain regions as physical pain. Yet, how rejection shapes subsequent self-evaluation and other-evaluation in front 202509.12Presentation Second Language Speech and Text Integration Mechanism (Poster Presentation at the international conference) In collaboration with Professor Mayumi Kajiura at Nagoya City University, we conducted an fMRI study to address the question: “How do second language learners integrate audio and text, and 202509.07Presentation The Effect of Social Pressure on Facial Emotion Recognition in Lonely People and Its Neural Mechanism (Poster Presentation) Lonely people perceive the social world as threatening and avoid social interactions due to biased cognitive process. However, previous study showed mixed findings on how lonely people recognize other 202509.07Presentation Insights of four key dialogue modes in daily communication and their neural bases(Poster Presentation) We defined “Dialogue Modes” (DMs) as patterns of enjoyable daily conversations driven by distinct social motivations. Using fMRI, we found that Relief, Comfort, Novelty, and Hobby modes ea 202509.07Presentation The Influence of Personality Traits and Optimism on Experimental Pain: fMRI Study(Poster Presentation) Personality traits are known to influence pain perception. Some studies suggest that individuals with higher extraversion and agreeableness show greater pain tolerance, while others argue that highly
