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Dr. Yuko Akitsuki is a research associate in the SCN Lab. She was awarded an M.D. (Psychiatry) from Tohoku University (Japan) in 1995 and a Ph.D. in 2005.
Having a background as a clinical psychiatrist, she is interested in functional imaging studies on social cognitive deficits of patients with mental disorders. Her chief interest is in the confluence of etiology and treatment/rehabilitation of these disorders. In the SCN Lab, Yuko conducts research on the neural and cognitive mechanisms that underpin intersubjectivity in healthy individuals as well as people with psychiatric disorders.
e-mail: akitsuki@uchicago.edu
Phone: (773) 702 4661
1989-1995: Tohoku University School of Medicine.
Awarded the degree of M.D. in 1995.
2001-2005. Tohoku University Postgraduate School of Medicine
Awarded the degree of Ph.D. in 2005 for a thesis entitled “Context-dependent cortical activation in response to financial reward and penalty: an event-related fMRI study”. Supervisor Professor Ryuta Kawashima.
2008. Assistant Professor in the Department of Functional Brain Imaging, IDAC, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.
Research and Professional Experiences:
2006–present: Post-doctoral fellow in the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago, under the supervision of Professor Jean Decety.
1995-2006: Clinical psychiatrist at the Tohoku university hospital and other municipal hospitals.
2005-present: Research associate at the department of Psychiatry, Tohoku university postgraduate school of medicine, working under Professor Hiroo Matsuoka, and NCIHe, Tohoku University and Professor Ryuta Kawashima.
Membership of academic societies:
Organization of human brain mapping
Japan neuroscience society
Japanese society of psychiatry and neurology
Japanese society of psychopathology
Japanese society of transcultural psychiatry
Technical skills:
Functional MRI.
Knowledge of experimental design.
Operation of MRI scanner (SIEMENS and GE).
Signal analysis using SPM99/SPM2/SPM5 and other statistical programs.
Computer programming for visual stimulus (E-prime and Presentation).
Main Research Interests:
- Emotion processing and emotion regulation.
- Social cognition and communication.
- Psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery.
- Esthetic evaluation.
- Psychopathology（schizophrenia, depression).
- Language.
- Transcultural psychiatry.
In preparation and subbmitted
Akitsuki, Y., & Decety, J. (submitted). Social context affects empathy for pain: an event-related fMRI investigation.
Decety, J., Michalska, K., & Akitsuki, Y. (submitted). Who caused the pain? A functional MRI investigation of empathy and intentionality in children.
Decety, J., Michalska, K., Akitsuki, Y., & Lahey, B. (in preparation). Atypical empathy responses in adolescents with conduct disorder: a functional MRI exploration.
Akitsuki, Y., & Decety, J. (in preparation). Neural mechanisms associated with the doing good or bad.
Decety, J., Akitsuki, Y., & Porges, E. (in preparation). Imagining actions with different moral consequences: an fMRI study.
Published
Sassa, Y., Sugiura, M., Watanabe, J., Akitsuki, Y., Maeda, Y., Matsue, Y., & Kawashima. R. (2007). Processing of anomalous sentences in Japanese: An fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 8, 153-170.
Yokoyama, S., Miyamoto, T., Riera, J., Kim, J., Akitsuki, Y., Iwata, K., Yoshimoto, K., Horie, K., Sato, S., and Kawashima, R. (2006). Cortical mechanisms involved in the processing of verbs: An fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 1304-1313.
Ikuta, N., Sugiura, M., Sassa, Y., Watanabe, J., Akitsuki, Y., Iwata, K., Miura, N., Okamoto, N., Watanabe, Y., Sato, S., Horie, K., Matsue, Y., and Kawashima, R. (2006). Brain activation during the course of sentence comprehension. Brain and Language, 97, 154-161.
Sugiura, M., Sassa, Y., Watanabe, J., Akitsuki, Y., Maeda, Y., Matsue, Y., Fukuda, H., and Kawashima, R. (2006). Cortical mechanisms of person representation: Recognition of famous and personally familiar names. NeuroImage, 31, 853-860.
Sugiura, M., Sassa, Y., Jeong, H., Miura, N., Akitsuki, Y., Horie, K., Sato, S., &
Kawashima, R. (2006). Multiple brain networks for visual self-recognition with different
sensitivity for motion and body part. NeuroImage, 32, 1905-1917.
Yomogida, Y., Sugiura, M., Watanabe, J., Akitsuki, Y., Sassa, Y., Sato, T., Yoshihiko, M., and Kawashima, R. (2004). Mental visual synthesis is originated in the front-temporal network of the left hemisphere. Cerebral Cortex, 14, 1376-1383.
Akitsuki, Y., Sugiura, M., Watanabe, J., Yamashita, K., Sassa, Y., Awata, S., Matsuoka, H., Matsue, Y., Fukuda, H., and Kawashima, R. (2003). Context-dependent cortical activation in response to financial reward and penalty: An event-related fMRI study. Neuroimage, 19, 1674-1685.
Miura, N., Iwata, K., Watanabe, J., Sugiura, M., Akitsuki, Y., Sassa, Y., Ikuta, N., Okamoto, H., Watanabe, Y., Riera, J., Maeda, Y., Matsue, Y., and Kawashima, R. (2003). Cortical activation during reading aloud of long sentences: An fMRI study. Neuroreport, 14, 1563-1566.
Ikuta, N., Sugiura, M., Sassa, Y., Watanabe, J., Akitsuki, Y., Iwata, K., Watanabe, Y., Okamoto, H., Miura, N., Sato, S., Horie, K., Matsue, Y., and Kawashima, R. (2002). Brain Activation Associated with the Processing of Grammatical Functions, Subject, Object and Verb. Bulletin of Tohoku University International Student Center, 6, 1-9
