NEWS
[Jun. 2025] An invited talk at OIST Computational Neuroscience Course 2025.
[Mar. 2025] An invited talk at 24th Workshop on the Mechanism of Brain and Mind.
[Nov. 2024] An invited talk at Consortium for Applied Neuroscience.
[Oct. 2024] An invited lecture at the University of Tokyo, EEIC (Media Contents Special Lecture Series II)
[Sep. 2024] Our paper for the LLMs and Brain was accepted at EMNLP 2024 (long; main conference)!
[Sep. 2024] An invited talk at The 19th Symposium of Young Researcher Association for NLP Studies
[Sep. 2024] Received the Grant-in-Aid for Fostering Joint International Research (A) from MEXT (Collaborating with Dr. Satoshi Nishida)
[Jul. 2024] Contributed a chapter (Chapter 10) to the textbook Computational and Network Modeling of Neuroimaging Data
[Jun. 2024] An invited talk at Osaka University FBS Seminar
[Jun. 2024] An invited talk at 22nd VERSUS Multi Modalit Symposium
[May. 2024] An interview by NHK (Science ZERO)
[May. 2024] An invited talk at the Young Researcher Association for Evolutionary Biology
[Apr. 2024] Received the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) from MEXT (PI)
[Apr. 2024] Received the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) from MEXT (Collaborating with Prof. Hiroshi Imamizu)
[Apr. 2024] Transferred to the Large Language Model Center at the National Institute of Informatics!
[Mar. 2024] Received the Interdisciplinary Research Award from Telecommunications Advancement Foundation
[Mar. 2024] An invited talk at HUAWEI Japan
[Feb. 2024] An invited talk at AAAI 2024 (Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Brain Encoding and Decoding).
[Feb. 2024] An invited talk at CiNet Conference 2024.
[Feb. 2024] An invited talk at International Science Club of Osaka.
[Jan. 2024] Commented on Discover Magazine.
[Jan. 2024] An invited talk at L-INSIGHT Career Program @ Kyoto University.
[Jan. 2024] An invited talk at National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry.
[Dec. 2023] An invited talk at The 1st Japan-Korea Workshop on Artificial Intelligence.
[Nov. 2023] An interview by Nippon TV (NTV).
[Nov. 2023] An invited talk at Consortium for Applied Neuroscience.
[Oct. 2023] Received Osaka University Award.
[Oct. 2023] An invited talk at Vision Science Forum.
[Oct. 2023] An invited talk at Science SARU.
[Oct. 2023] Awarded from JST PRESTO (a.k.a. SAKIGAKE).
[Sep. 2023] Received Best Presentation Award at the 12th CREST Research Area Meeting.
[Aug. 2023] An invited talk at Sony Interactive Entertainment.
[Aug. 2023] Our Brain2Music has been featured in more than 40 media and news outlets around the world!
[Aug. 2023] Commented on The New York Times.
[Aug. 2023] An interview by Deutschlandradio.
[Aug. 2023] An interview by TV3 - Televisió de Catalunya.
[Jul. 2023] An invited talk at MIRU 2023.
[Jul. 2023] An invited talk at NLP Colloquium.
[Jul. 2023] An invited talk at BRAINTECH CONSORTIUM.
[Jul. 2023] An interview by ABEMA TV.
[Jul. 2023] New preprint for Brain2Music!
[Jun. 2023] An interview by TBS Television.
[May. 2023] An invited talk at NLP Group in Tohoku University.
[May. 2023] An invited talk at Donders Institute for Brain (online).
[Mar. 2023] Our paper has been featured as "A new artificial intelligence system can reconstruct images a person saw based on their brain activity” in more than 60 media and news outlets around the world, including Science, Scientific American, NewScientist, 朝日新聞 and many others!
[Feb. 2023] Our paper "High-resolution image reconstruction with latent diffusion models from human brain activity" was accepted at CVPR2023! Please check out our webpage at this URL

Hi, I am a Project Associate Professor at the Research and Development Center for Large Language Models at National Institute of Informatics. My research interest lies at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computational Neuroscience. During my Ph.D., I worked on reliable techniques for predicting diverse individual differences from whole-brain functional connectivity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at the ATR Brain Information Communication Research Laboratory. After obtaining my degree, I have been working on understanding dynamic computations during complex decision-making tasks using machine learning techniques at the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity at the University of Oxford, and Department of Psychology at the University of Tokyo. More recently, I investigated the connection between generative AI and the human brain at Osaka University.

Publications/Preprints


*corresponding author; †equal contribution; ‡equal last author

Yuko Nakagi†, Takua Matsuyama†, Naoko Koide-Majima, Hiroto Yamaguchi, Rieko Kubo, Shinji Nishimoto*‡, Yu Takagi*‡
Unveiling Multi-level and Multi-modal Semantic Representations in the Human Brain using Large Language Models
EMNLP, 2024

Timo I. Denk*†, Yu Takagi*†, Takuya Matsuyama, Andrea Agostinelli, Tomoya Nakai, Christian Frank, Shinji Nishimoto
Brain2Music: Reconstructing Music from Human Brain Activity
Project page
arXiv, 2023

Miriam C. Klein-Flügge*, ,Daria E. A. Jensen, Yu Takagi Luke Priestley, Lennart Verhagen, Stephen M. Smith, Matthew F. S. Rushworth
Relationship between nuclei-specific amygdala connectivity and mental health dimensions in humans (Open Access)
Nature Human Behaviour, 2022

Yu Takagi*, Laurence T. Hunt, Ryu Ohata, Hiroshi Imamizu, Jun-ichiro Hirayama
Neural dSCA: demixing multimodal interaction among brain areas during naturalistic experiments
arXiv, 2021

Yu Takagi*, Naohiro Okada ,Shuntaro Ando ,Noriaki Yahata ,Kentaro Morita ,Daisuke Koshiyama ,Shintaro Kawakami ,Kingo Sawada , Shinsuke Koike ,Kaori Endo ,Syudo Yamasaki ,Atsushi Nishida ,Kiyoto Kasai , Saori C. Tanaka
Intergenerational transmission of the patterns of functional and structural brain networks (Open Access)
iScience, 2021

Yu Takagi*, Laurence T Hunt, Mark W Woolrich, Timothy E.J. Behrens†, Miriam Klein-Flugge*†
Adapting non-invasive human recordings along multiple task-axes shows unfolding of spontaneous and over-trained choice (Open Access)
eLife, 2021

Yu Takagi*, Steven W. Kennerley, Jun-ichiro Hirayama†, Laurence T. Hunt†
Demixed shared component analysis of neural population data from multiple brain areas (Open Access)
Cosyne, 2021

Yu Takagi*, Steven W. Kennerley, Jun-ichiro Hirayama†, Laurence T. Hunt†
Demixed shared component analysis of neural population data from multiple brain areas (Open Access)
NeurIPS (selected as a top 5% spotlight paper), 2020

Yu Takagi*, Yuki Sakai, Yoshinari Abe, Seiji Nishida, Ben J Harrison, Ignacio Martínez-Zalacaín, Carles Soriano-Mas, Jin Narumoto, Saori C. Tanaka*
A common brain network among state, trait, and pathological anxiety from whole-brain functional connectivity (Open Access)
NeuroImage, 2018; 172: 506-516

Yu Takagi†, Yuki Sakai†, Giuseppe Lisi, Noriaki Yahata, Yoshinari Abe, Seiji Nishida, Takashi Nakamae, Jun Morimoto, Mitsuo Kawato, Jin Narumoto, Saori C. Tanaka*
A neural marker of obsessive-compulsive disorder from whole-brain functional connectivity (Open Access)
Scientific Reports, 2017; 7(1)


Conferences (not peer-reviewed)


Yu Takagi*, Wako Yoshida†, Saori C. Tanaka†
Model abstraction for model-based reinforcement learning in the human orbitofrontal cortex
2019 Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN2019) Berlin, Germany, September 2019.

Yu Takagi, Jun-ichiro Hirayama, Saori C. Tanaka
A stably appeared latent neural representation across states is predictive of intelligence
40th Annual Meeting of the Japan Neuroscience Society Kobe, Japan, July 2018.
Invited as a symposist

Yu Takagi, Yuki Sakai, Saori C Tanaka
A neuromarker of anxiety from whole-brain functional connectivity
IEEE CISJ (Neurocomputing) Okinawa, Japan, July 2016.
Received the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Japan Chapter Young Researcher Award (Neurocomputing)

Yu Takagi, Yuki Sakai, Yoshinari Abe, Seiji Nishida, Takashi Nakamae, Jin Narumoto, Kei Yamada, Kenji Fukui, Saori C Tanaka
A neuromarker of obsessive-compulsive disoder from whole-brain functional connectivity
The 29th Annual Conference of the Japanese Society of Artificial Intelligence (JSAI 2015), Hakodate, Japan, June 2015.
Received the JSAI Annual Conference Student Incentive Award.

Yu Takagi
Invited Speaker (Title: Neural link between obsessive-compulsive disorders and delay discounting)
1st Neuroeconomics Workshop, Kanagawa, Japan, February 2015

Yu Takagi, Yuki Sakai, Seiji Nishida, Takashi Nakamae, Jin Narumoto, Kei Yamada, Kenji Fukui, Saori C Tanaka
Neural link between obsessive-compulsive disorders and delay discounting
The Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the Japanese Neural Network Society (JNNS 2014), Hakodate, Japan, pp.44-45, August 2014.
Received the JNNS Young Presenter Award.

Yu Takagi, Saori C Tanaka, Yuki Sakai, Jin Narumoto and Mitsuo Kawato
Neural link between obsessive-compulsive disorders and delay discounting
Santander International Summer School “Frontiers in Neuroeconomics“ Heiderberg, April, 2014

Careers


2024 Apr -
National Institute of Informatics
Research and Development Center for Large Language Models
Project Associate Professor

2023 Oct -
Japan Science and Technology Agency
PRESTO Researcher

2021 Jun - 2024 Mar
Osaka University
Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences
Assistant Professor

2020 Oct - 2021 May
JSPS Overseas Research Fellow (Stanford University)
Terminated due to COVID-19


2020 Jun - 2021 May
University of Tokyo
Department of Psychology
Specially appointed researcher
Supervisor: Hiroshi Imamizu

2018 Apr - 2020 Jun
University of Oxford
Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN)
Visiting researcher
Supervisor: Laurence Hunt
Main collaborators: Miriam Klein-Fluegge, Jun-ichiro Hirayama, Mark Woolrich , Timothy Behrens , Steve Kennerley

2018 Apr - 2019 Mar
University of Tokyo
Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine
Specially appointed researcher
Supervisor: Kiyoto Kasai


Education


2015 Apr - 2018 Mar
Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST)
Graduate School of Information Science
Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience
Supervisor: Mitsuo Kawato and Saori C Tanaka
Research Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS DC1) [About]

2013 Apr - 2015 Mar
Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST)
Graduate School of Information Science
M.S. in Computational Neuroscience
Supervisor: Mitsuo Kawato and Saori C Tanaka

2007 Apr - 2011 Mar
Hitotsubashi University
Department of Economics
B.A. in Economics (major in Development Finance)
Supervisor: Hidenobu Okuda


Experience


2016 Aug - 2016 Sep
Preferred Networks
Reserach Internship (Implemented state-of-the-art deep learning model for anomaly detection from multi-modal dataset)
Supervisors: Daisuke Okanohara and Daisuke Tanaka

2016 Feb - 2016 Mar
DWANGO Co.,Ltd.
Research Internship (Trained deep recurrent neural network for video recommendation)
Supervisor: Yuri Odagiri

2015 Apr - 2018 Mar
Research Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS DC1) [About]

2011 Apr - 2013 Mar
Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC)
Full-time financial officer (Loans and equity investments for overseas projects)


Awards, Funding & Fellowships


Osaka University Award
Osaka University, 2023

Interdisciplinary Research Award
Telecommunications Advancement Foundation, 2023

Best Presentation Award
The 12th CREST Research Area Meeting, 2023

PRESTO researcher
Japan Science and Technology Agency, 2023

JSPS Overseas Research Fellowship (Stanford University)
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), 2021

JSPS PD (declined)
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), 2020

FUNAI Research Promotion Award
Funai Foundation For Information Technology, 2020

Uehara Memorial Foundation, Postdoctoral Fellowship
Uehara Memorial Foundation, 2019

JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), 2018

IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Japan Chapter Young Researcher Award (Neurocomputing).
IEEE CISJ (Neurocomputing), Okinawa, Japan, 7 July, 2016.

JSAI Annual Conference Student Incentive Award
29th Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI2015), Hakodate, Japan, 1 June, 2015.

NAIST Excellent Student Scholarship
Nara Institute of Science and Technology Top Scholarship Student, 2015, JPY 535,800

Japan Student Services Organization (JASSO) Scholarship programs
Exemption from JASSO scholarship refund (100%) for excellent student, 2015, JPY 1,056,000

Research Fellowship of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists (JSPS DC1), 2015-2018, JPY 2,400,000 per year

JNNS Young Presenter Award
24th Annual Conference of the Japanese Neural Network Society (JNNS2014), Hakodate, Japan, August, 2014.

Travel Award: Santander International Summer School “Frontiers in Neuroeconomics“, Heiderberg, April, 2014

Creative and International Competitiveness Project (Team Leader), NAIST, 2013


Skills


Natural Languages
Japanese(Native), English(Fluent), Russian(1 year)

Programming Languages
Python, MATLAB, C, Java, Scala, Ruby

References & CV


Available on request