Riken Brain Science Institute

Atsushi Iriki is Head of the Laboratory for Symbolic Cognitive Development at the Riken Brain Science Institute.  In his early work with monkeys, he found that monkeys could learn to generate vocalizations for specific tools, also make small modifications to those innate vocalizations, and this training was associated with changes in cortical structure. He is now trying to uncover evolutionary precursors of human higher cognitive functions grounded onto physical morphologies and patterns of structured bodily actions, based on behavioral and neurophysiological analyses on chronic macaque monkeys, which were trained to use tools and other high-tech apparatus. By sharing these machineries among individuals, he is attempting to extrapolate the mechanisms to constitute bases of communicatory functions, and eventually understand neural mechanism to form intellectual and altruistic society to comprise humanistic civilization environment. He has authored over 130 papers and chapters, and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience Research and Co-Editor Experimental Brain Research.

Plenary Address:    How Human Intelligence May Have Emerged Through Primates’ Brain Evolution  (Iriki Plenary Abstract)