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About the Project

Shimojo Implicit Brain Functions Project starts from October 1, 2004, aiming at understanding of implicit, or subconscious, brain functions underlying conscious emotional decision making. Based on the assumption that somatic processes, in particular orienting and its neural correlate, precedes conscious emotional decision, our scientific goal is to identify the neural precursors as well as behavioral principles that determine emotional decision such as preference.
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Announcements

  • A hot news! Our poster presented at APCV (Asian Pacific Conference of Visual Perception) won the "Best Student Poster" Award. The title of the poster is "Retrieval of visual percept by paired association of a visual stimulus and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): Effect of TMS delay"(coauthored by Hsin-I Liao & Shinsuke Shimojo). If you are intersted in the content, please contact us.

  • Hsin-I Liao's poster on "the TMS- retrieval replay" has received the award from the APCV 2008 organization committee.

  • We have published a paper reporting that "avoidance of punishment is for its own sake a reward in the brain"(PLoS Biology, August 2006,4-8, e233). An article featuring this study is in New Scientist:
    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9469-dodging-punishment-may-be-its-own-reward.html

  • Caltech News Release:
    April 24, 2006
    Letters and Symbols Originated Across Cultures to Mimic Natural Scenes, Study Says Details here

  • News stories about the article regarding the writing systems in natural languages and their shapes constrained by visual functions by Dr. Mark Changizi, Dr. Shinsuke Shimojo et al. appeared in News Week. Details here


  • Caltech News Release:
    March 2, 2006
    Old-World Primates Evolved Color Vision to Better See Each Other Blush, Study Reveals Details here

  • News stories about the article regarding the evolution of primate colour vision by Dr. Mark Changizi, Dr. Shinsuke Shimojo et al. appeared in The Times, New Scientist, Reuters and Scientific American (May issue).
    * TimesOnline Details here
    * New Scientist Details here
    * Scientific American (May issue) Details here


  • A new biological/evolutionary theory of color perception has been proposed and published!(Biology Letters) Details here.

  • Newspaper column in Japanese!
    Shin Shimojo (the Research Director of ERATO Implicit Brain Fuction Project) wrote a series of weekly column titled "Adventure of the Eyes" on Asahi Shimbun newspaper. The topics covered mainly perception, art, and design, partly the content of this ERATO project. Please take a look.
    The details of these columns are here.
Copyright © 2004-05 Dr. Shinsuke Shimojo