The growing trouble of interpersonal contacts such as “Social Withdrawal” and “Loss of Self-Control” and psychiatric diseases such as dementia, autism, schizophrenia and depression are social problems that will come to the surface more and more in the future. All of these failures appear as a result of activities in the human brains. In order to elucidate the reason of the failures and solve them, it is important to clarify the mechanism in which how differences in brain structure and function of each person occur.
This strategic program “Cognitive Genomics” aims to elucidate individuality of brain structure and function by integration of human genome research, brain imaging, and model animal analysis.
Specifically, major research issues combined with experimental systems using model animals, etc. are listed below.
1, Identification of biomarkers related to behavioral individuality by genomics and brain imaging
2. Generation of useful model organisms to analyze biological function of the biomarkers
3. Validation of the biomarkers and related makers found through model organism analysis for human behavioral individuality
Since the achievements including biomarkers to be obtained from these researches, which are involved in cognition, and various analytical technologies contribute to solving problems of “Mind” whose social importance will increase more in the future and “Psychiatric Diseases,” it is desired to address the issues early.