Topic: Brain-body interaction

The Brain-Body Interaction RIKEN ECL Research Team, led by Tomoe Ishikawa and scheduled to be established on 1 December 2026, seeks one or two research scientists or postdoctoral researchers. Research will use mouse models, neurophysiology, biology and immunology to investigate how social behaviour and neural circuits affect responses to pathogen infection. The programme aims to understand brain–body and neuroimmune regulation of physiological functions and whether neural activity can modulate immune responses. The appointment is based at the Wako campus; employment is planned from 1 April 202

Empirical evidence and theoretical models both increasingly emphasize the importance of interoceptive processing in mental health. Indeed, many mood and psychiatric disorders involve disturbed feelings and/or beliefs about the visceral body. However, current methods to measure interoceptive ability are limited in a number of ways, restricting the utility and interpretation of interoceptive biomarkers in psychiatry. I will present some newly developed measures and models which aim to improve our understanding of disordered brain-body interaction in psychiatric illnesses.