HIAS Brain Research Center (HIAS-BRC)
The Brain Research Center was established on July 1, 2023 as an affiliated center of Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study at Hitotsubashi University.
This center is equipped with a magnetic resonance imaging system (MRI) and an electromagnetic shielding laboratory as shared facilities. By opening these facilities not only to the center’s faculty members but also to researchers outside the university, we aim to collaborate with other HIAS centers, namely the Data-driven Society Research Center, the Research Center for Health Policy and Economics as well as other research institutes and private companies. We will strive to create new “integrated knowledge” by mixing social science, data science, and health research fields.
This center consists of the following three groups, and in each field, we conduct world-leading research and aim to develop the social science field through brain function measurement experiments and neuroscientific knowledge.
The roles of each group are as follows:
① Cognitive Science Team
The field of cognitive science, which studies human cognitive functions such as perception, memory, language, and problem solving, serves as a bridge between the way humans are viewed at the individual level, which is the subject of brain science, and the social sciences, which focuses on society. Treating brain function measurement with a cognitive scientific perspective will lead to effective use of brain function measurement in the social science field.
② Computational Neuroscience Team
Computational neuroscience is a field that combines mathematical models and experiments to elucidate information processing performed by the brain. It is closely related to the fields of artificial intelligence and data science, and will collaborate with the Faculty of Social Data Science, established in 2022, to conduct research. Furthermore, in the field of social sciences, we are creating a new research field called “neuroeconomics”, a good match with economics, which has advanced mathematical modeling, and aims to accelerate brain function measurement in new research fields.
③ Social Psychology Team
A field called social brain science, which studies the neural basis of social behavior, has been developing in recent years. Our university has also developed strengths in the field of social psychology, which studies the influence of the social and cultural environment on behavior, cognition, emotion, and well-being. We will carry out the world’s most cutting-edge research by improving and developing experimental methods so that the knowledge accumulated at our university can be utilized in the field of brain function measurement.
Through these project teams, we aim to contribute to the further development of social science and the resolution of social problems through cooperation between the social science field and brain function measurement.
