Full Professor, Dr. Jun Ota.
Research into Artifacts, Center for Engineering (RACE)
The University of Tokyo, Japan
时间：12月16日晚7:30
地点：19号楼209会议室
Abstract
As the Japanese society ages rapidly, we are experiencing a sharp increase in the number of cases of motor paralysis and other dysfunctions resulting from motor dysfunction, stroke, and neurodegenerative diseases. Thus, establishing effective rehabilitation techniques to overcome these motor dysfunctions is of paramount importance. The key to achieving this is to elucidate the mechanisms by which the brain adapts to changes in body functions. However, abnormalities in somatognosia can occur even in diseases that do not cause motor dysfunction. This indicates that we create and maintain a model of the body in the brain (body representation in the brain).
We have started MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan) project, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “Understanding brain plasticity on body representations to promote their adaptive functions (Principal investigator: Jun Ota, The Univ. of Tokyo),” for five years from 2014 to 2018. The purpose of this project is to elucidate the neural mechanisms of the body representation in the brain and the mechanism of the long-term changes in this representation and to apply these findings to rehabilitation interventions. In order to do this, we will attempt to combine brain science and rehabilitation medicine by using systems engineering. We thereby intend to gain an integrated understanding of motor control and somatognosia in order to create a new academic discipline that is known as embodied-brain systems science.
HP: http://embodied-brain.org
In this presentation, scope of the above-mentioned project will be presented.
Speaker Biography
Professor Jun Ota is a Professor at Research into Artifacts, Center for Engineering (RACE), the University of Tokyo, Japan.
He received B.E., M.E. and Ph.D degrees from the Faculty of Engineering, the University of Tokyo in 1987, 1989 and 1994 respectively. From 1989 to 1991, he joined Nippon Steel Cooperation. In 1991, he was a Research Associate of the University of Tokyo. In 1996, he became an Associate Professor. From April 2009, he became a Professor at Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo. From June 2009, he became a Professor at at Research into Artifacts, Center for Engineering (RACE), the University of Tokyo. From 1996 to 1997, he was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. His research interests are multi-agent robot systems, design support for large-scale production/material handling systems, embodied-brain systems science, enmobiligence, human behavior analysis and support.
