Emotional Information Joint Research Laboratory
Laboratory Head
Kazuo OKANOYA (Ph.D.)
We seek for biological/psychological understanding on how animal communication including birdsong, human language, and rodent vocalizations are modulated by emotional and affective processes.
- Birdsong and human music are organized by small number of distinct syllables arranged in various sequences. We study behavioral and neural mechanisms that produce sequential varieties.
- Mechanisms for emotional information
The most critical determinant of animal behavior is emotion. Emotion is a biological process of joy, anger, sad, and happy. Human affect is an interpretation of these biological emotions by language. We advance integrative studies of emotion to understand neural mechanisms and information characteristics of emotion. - Biological origin of language
Human is the only animal that use language, but sub-faculties that are enabling language should be descendent from non-human animals. Language maybe evolved from the interface between song system and emotion system. We also aim to construct theories for language emergence.
- Yosida, S., & Okanoya, K.:
" Bilateral lesions of the medial frontal cortex disrupt recognition of social hierarchy during antiphonal communication in naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber)."
Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 198, 109-117. (2012). - Aucouturier, J.-J., Nonaka, Y., Katahira, K., & Okanoya, K.:
" Segmentation of expiratory and inspiratory sounds in baby cry audio recordings using hidden Markov models."
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(5), 2969-2977. (2011). - Berwick, R. C., Okanoya, K., Beckers, G. J. L., & Bolhuis, J. J.:
" Songs to syntax: the linguistics of birdsong."
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(3), 113-121. (2011). - Hasegawa, A., Okanoya, K., Hasegawa, T., & Seki, Y.:
" Rhythmic synchronization tapping to an audio-visual metronome in budgerigars."
Scientific Reports, 1, 1201-1208. (2011). - Katahira, K., Fujimura, T., Okanoya, K., & Okada, M.:
" Decision-making based on emotional images."
Frontiers in Emotion Science, 2, Article311-1-Article311-11. (2011). - Kikusui, T., Nakanishi, K., Nakagawa, R., Nagasawa, M., Mogi, K., & Okanoya, K.:
" Cross fostering experiments suggest that mice songs are innate."
PLoS One, 6(3), e17721-1-e17721-10. (2011). - Kudo, N., Nonaka, Y., Mizuno, N., Mizuno, K., & Okanoya, K.:
" On-line statistical segmentation of a non-speech aud auditory stream in neonates as demonstrated by event-related brain potentials."
Developmental Science, 14(5), 1100-1106. (2011). - Matsunaga, E., Suzuki, K., Kato, S., Kurotani, T., Kobayashi, K., & Okanoya, K.:
" Dynamic expression of cadherins regulates vocal development in a songbird."
PLoS One, 6(9), e25272-1-e25272-14. (2011). - Uekita, T., & Okanoya, K.:
" Hippocampus lesions induced deficits in social and spatial recognition in Octodon degus."
Behavioral Brain Research, 219, 302-309. (2011). - Bolhuis, J. J., Okanoya, K., & Scharff, C.:
" Twitter evolution: converging mechanisms in birdsong and human speech."
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11, 747-759. (2010).
Principal Investigator
- Kazuo OKANOYA
- Laboratory Head
Members
- Neal A HESSLER
- Research Scientist
- Ai KAWAKAMI
- Junior Research Associate
- Keiko KAMIYAMA
- Student Trainee
- Hitomi ABE
- Student Trainee
- Kenichi NIKISHIMA
- Student Trainee
- Keiko ASAI
- Technical Staff I
- Keiko ASAI
- Technical Staff II
- Hiromi NITO
- Technical Staff II
- Kiyoshi FURUKAWA
- Senior Visiting Scientist
- Yuichi YAMASHITA
- Visiting Scientist
- Jun NISHIKAWA
- Visiting Scientist
- Yoshimasa SEKI
- Visiting Scientist
- Miki TAKAHASHI
- Visiting Scientist
- Hiroko YOSHIDA
- Visiting Scientist
- Maki IKEBUCHI
- Visiting Scientist
- Katsumi MIZUNO
- Visiting Scientist
- Kentaro KATAHIRA
- Visiting Scientist
- Tohru KUROTANI
- Visiting Scientist
- Ryoko NAKAGAWA
- Visiting Scientist
- Tomomi FUJIMURA
- Visiting Scientist
- Maiko FUJIMORI
- Visiting Scientist
- Olga Erzsebet FEHER
- Visiting Scientist
- Yoshiko ARIMOTO
- Visiting Scientist
- Reiko HOSHI
- Visiting Scientist
- Yoshitaka MATSUDA
- Visiting Scientist
- Kenta SUZUKI
- Visiting Scientist
- Takayuki HAMANO
- Visiting Scientist
- Yuri NONAKA
- Visiting Technician
- Tsuyoshi FUJITA
- Visiting Technician
- Hidefumi OHMURA
- Visiting Technician