Rei Akaishi, Ph.D.

Research Overview

Societies around the world are now changing rapidly and in an accelerating pace. Research disciplines for studies of human being have not caught up with the rapid changes of the societies. To address these issues, our laboratory combines the research fields of decision science such as neuroeconomics, behavioral economics, psychology. In addition to these research fields of individual decision making, we will extend and connect principles of decision making to decision making at group and society levels with the aid of analysis techniques of big data, which are developed in new fields of collective behavior. Our research will bring about positive impacts to people in society by enhancing scientific understanding of humans and by creating sustainable designs of social systems. Through this exciting research endeavor, we create positive values for people in our global society.

Selected Publications

1. Nagase, A.M., Onoda, K., Foo, J.C., Haji, T., Akaishi, R., Yamaguchi, S., Sakai, K. and Morita, K.:
   "Neural Mechanisms for Adaptive Learned Avoidance of Mental Effort"
   Journal of Neuroscience, 38, 2631-2651 (2018)
2. Eisenreich, B.R., Akaishi, R. and Hayden, B.Y.:
   "Control without controllers: toward a distributed neuroscience of executive control"
   Journal of cognitive neuroscience 29, 1684-1698 (2017)
3. Wittmann, M.K., Kolling, N., Akaishi, R., Chau, B.K., Brown, J.W., Nelissen, N. and Rushworth, M.F.:
   "Predictive decision making driven by multiple time-linked reward representations in the anterior cingulate cortex"
   Nature communications, 7, 12327 (2016)
4. Akaishi, R. and Hayden, B.Y.:
   "A spotlight on reward"
   Neuron, 90, 1148-1150 (2016)
5. Akaishi, R., Kolling, N., Brown, J.W. and Rushworth, M.:
   "Neural mechanisms of credit assignment in a multicue environment."
   Journal of Neuroscience, 36, 1096-1112 (2016)
6. Akaishi, R., Umeda, K., Nagase, A. and Sakai, K.:
   "Autonomous mechanism of internal choice estimate underlies decision inertia"
   Neuron, 81, 195-206 (2014)
7. Akaishi, R., Ueda, N. and Sakai, K.:
   "Task-related modulation of effective connectivity during perceptual decision making: dissociation between dorsal and ventral prefrontal cortex."
   Frontiers in human neuroscience, 7, 365 (2013)
8. Akaishi, R., Morishima, Y., Rajeswaren, V.P., Aoki, S. and Sakai, K.:
   "Stimulation of the frontal eye field reveals persistent effective connectivity after controlled behavior."
   Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 4295-4305 (2010)
9. Soga, R., Akaishi, R. and Sakai, K.:
   "Predictive and postdictive mechanisms jointly contribute to visual awareness"
   Consciousness and cognition, 18, 578-592 (2009)
10. Morishima, Y., Akaishi, R., Yamada, Y., Okuda, J., Toma, K. and Sakai, K.:
    "Task-specific signal transmission from prefrontal cortex in visual selective attention"
    Nature neuroscience, 12, 85 (2009)