Okihide Hikosaka

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Okihide Hikosaka (彦 坂, 興 秀; * 1948) is a Japanese neuroscientist at the National Eye Institute , a facility of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda , Maryland . He is best known for his work on the importance of the basal ganglia for behavior , conscious decision-making and automated actions.

Hikosaka acquired in 1973 an MD at the University of Tokyo with a thesis on the vestibular-ocular brainstem system 1978 Hiroshi Shimazu a Ph.D. there. From 1978 Hikosaka was a lecturer at Toho University in Tokyo's Ōta district , from 1979 assistant professor. At the same time he worked as a postdoc from 1979 to 1982 with Robert H. Wurtz at the National Eye Institute . In 1983, Hikosaka became an associate professor at Toho University. In 1988 he moved to the Japanese National Institute of Physiology (生理学 研究所, Seirigaku kenkyuujo) in Okazaki as a professor , before moving back to Tokyo in 1993 at Juntendo University . Since 2002 Hikosaka research group leader for sensorimotor , again at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

Hikosaka deals with the control of eye movements , with the function of basal ganglia and dopaminergic nerve cells, as well as with the neural mechanisms of motivation , reward , procedural learning and visual-spatial attention . His research is of particular importance for the understanding of diseases such as depression , Parkinson's disease , addiction or schizophrenia , which are characterized by disorders of (movement) motivation and reward-dependent decisions.

In 2011, Hikosaka was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He received the Minerva Foundation's Golden Brain Award in 2015 and the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation's Gruber Prize for Neuroscience in 2018 .

Okihide Hikosaka lives in Bethesda, Maryland. He is married and has two children.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter H. (PDF; 1.2 MB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved June 8, 2018 .
  2. 2015: Hikosaka - The Golden Brains - Minerva Foundation. In: minervaberkeley.org. Accessed May 5, 2019 .
  3. Okihide Hikosaka, Laureate profiles - The Gruber Foundation. In: gruber.yale.edu. Retrieved June 8, 2018 .
  4. Okihide Hikosaka, Detailed Bio - The Gruber Foundation. In: gruber.yale.edu. Retrieved June 8, 2018 .