Japanese

Graduate School Faculty of Arts and Letters Tohoku University

Profiles

Professor SAKAI Nobuyuki

Affiliations :

  • Graduate School Faculty of Arts and Letters
  • Division of Department of Integrated Human Sciences
  • Psychology and Linguistics Course
  • Department of Psychology

I search for psychological knowledge that will help us in our daily lives

For instance, we are almost never really (physiologically) hungry under normal circumstances. And yet we eat when we “feel hungry”. Moreover, the taste of food and the amount consumed change according to our mood and physical condition, as well as place and company. It is the psychological and neurological background of such ordinary, normally unnoticeable behavior that I research.

  • Research, History
  • Books, papers, etc.
  • Courses
    Applied Psychology (Special Lecture); Experimental Psychology（General Lecture）
    Personal History
    1993 Graduated from the School of Human Sciences, Osaka University
    1998 Completed the doctoral program at the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University

    Career:
    1998 Awarded Research Fellowship for Young Scientists, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Hiroshima Shudo University)
    2001 Awarded Research Fellowship for Young Scientists, the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
    2003-2011 Associate Professor, Faculty of Human Sciences/Graduate School, Kobe Shoin Women's University
    Oct, 2011 Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University
    Apr, 2017 Appointed to current position
    Degree
    Ph.D. (Human Sciences)
    Field
    Psychology; Neuroscience; Applied Psychology; Health Psychology
    Research Subject
    Psychology of eating (including psychology of sensation and perception, biological psychology, health psychology, etc.);
    Chemical sensing system (sense of taste, sense of smell, somatic senses, etc.) from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience
    Keywords
    Sense of taste; sense of smell; somatic senses; palatability; comfort
    Affiliation
    The Japanese Psychological Association; The Japan Association of Applied Psychology; The Japanese Association for the Study of Taste and Smell
    Database of Researchers Information
    http://db.tohoku.ac.jp/whois/detail/cd73080c3f020ae96952acfd2ef4209e.html
  • Books
    『香りや見た目で脳を勘違いさせる　毎日が楽しくなる応用心理学』、かんき出版、2016
    『ピュイゼ　子どものための味覚教育　食育入門編』、講談社、2016（joint authorship）
    Academic Papers
    「だれかと食べるとたくさん食べる？だれかと食べるとおいしい？」、『行動科学』54、2016、101-109（with Yamanaka Sachiko and Hasegawa Tomoko）
    "Higher-order conditioning of taste-odor learning in rats: Evidence for the association between emotional aspects of gustatory information and olfactory information," in Physiology and Behavior, 164(Part A), 2016, 407-416（with Ōnuma Takuya）
    "Psychological and physiological bases of umami taste perception as related to nutrition," in Novel Approaches of Nanotechnology in Food, Mihai, A. Ed., Academic Press, 2016, 697-723（with Visith Chavasit and Uneyama Hisauyki）
    「気になるニオイ」、『心理学ワールド』74、2016、5-8
    「風味の快楽」　『基礎心理学研究』35、2016、 21-24（with Ōnuma Takuya）
    Awards
    2013 Human Communication Group Award. With Tanaka Kanji, Na Chen, and Watanabe Katsumi.
    2014 The Japanese Association for the Study of Taste and Smell Outstanding Poster Award. With Fuchimoto Jun, Araki Shigeki, and Nakamura Tsuyoshi.
    2016 The Best Presentation Award, the 90th Annual Convention of the Japanese Psychological Association. With Ōnuma Takuya.
    2016 Saito Isamu Book Award, Japan Association of Applied Psychology.
    2017 Tohoku University Award for Contribution to General Education (2016)
    News
    「～なぜそれはうまいのか？～おいしさを科学する！」、『ビーバップ！ハイヒール』、朝日放送、4.02.2016（program guest）
    「世界遺産「和食」に迫る　東北大ゼミ好評」、『河北新報』、31.07.2016（newspaper article）
    Others
    Collaborations with various companies

Research

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