Welcome

Human and Information Science Laboratory NTT Communication Science Laboratories NTT Corporation 3-1 Morinosato Wakamiya Atsugi, Kanagawa 243-0198 JAPAN

Research Interest

An essentail function of the sensory system is the strucuring of auditory and visual scene, namely, perceptual organization. However, it is unclear how and where sensory inputs are transformed into perceptual representations.

Bistable perception phenomena provide us with clues enabling us to investigate that issue because constant physical stimulation produces spontaneous switching between different percepts. We combine bistable perception phenomena (mainly auditory and visual illusions) with brain imaging techniques (mainly fMRI) to examine neural mechanisms of perceptual organization.

We have demonstrated that cortical and subcortical areas are involved in the formation of percepts, and the synchronization of activations among these areas plays a critical role in the selection of percepts. Our findings will lead to the development of an audiovisual apparatus that considers individual differences in perception.

Selected Publications

• Kashino, M. & Kondo, H. M. (in press) Functional brain networks underlying perceptual switching: auditory streaming and verbal transformations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.
  
  
• Kondo, H. M., Kitagawa, N., Kitamura, M. S., Koizumi, A., Nomura, M., & Kashino, M. (in press) Separability and commonality of auditory and visual bistable perception. Cerebral Cortex
  
  
• Kondo, H. M., & Kashino, M. (2009) Involvement of the thalamocortical loop in the spontaneous switching of percepts in auditory streaming. Journal of Neuroscience, 29, 12695-12701. [PubMed]
  
  
• Kondo, H. M., & Kashino, M. (2007) Neural mechanisms of auditory awareness underlying verbal transformations. NeuroImage, 36, 123-130. [PubMed]