Poster Presentation by Dr. Abe et al. Received Early Career Researcher Award at the 21st Congress of Japan Human Brain Mapping Society

Ryuhei Ueda (Ph.D. candidate) presented a poster by Associate Professor Nobuhito Abe et al. at the 21st Congress of Japan Human Brain Mapping Society’s Early Career Researcher Award.

The Congress of Japan Human Brain Mapping Society aims to do crosswise and comprehensive research on mapping the human brain, communicating with other academic societies and seeking intellectual exchanges. The Early Career Researcher Award is given to distinguished presentations by researchers under the age of 35.

Topic
Neural mechanisms of maintaining romantic relationships: an investigation using social incentive delay task

Presenters
Ryuhei Ueda (Ph.D. candidate, Kyoto University, former office assistant for Kokoro Research Center)
Nobuhito Abe (Associate Professor, Kokoro Research Center)

This research investigated activity in the nucleus accumbens of participants when they anticipate seeing images of their partners’ positive emotions. The nucleus accumbens is associated with the expectation of gaining social rewards as well as money and food. The results revealed that individuals who showed stronger activity of the nucleus accumbens when they anticipated seeing images of their partner’s positive emotions reported stronger romantic feelings toward their partners than when they anticipated seeing images of someone other than their partners. The results also revealed that such participants’ interest in extra-pair relationships was low.

Dr. Ueda, the presenter, commented, “I feel honored to receive the award at this time as I am graduating and moving to the next stage in my life. I would like to continue my research on how romantic relationships are supported by psychological and neural mechanisms.”

The 21st Congress of Japan Human Brain Mapping Society

2019/04/03