I have been working on how time is processed in the brain. My initial model system was the circadian clock network, where I showed that clocks do not always agree on time and the degree of disagreement represents the seasonal time. My recent research on cognitive consequences of time processing has led me to issues in consciousness and neuroscientific interpretation of epistemology.

Education

2012     
PhD in Life Sciences, Kyoto University, Japan

2007     
MS in Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington, USA

2005     
MS in Physics, POSTECH, Korea

2002     
BS in Physics, Korea University, Korea

Academic Positions

2016 – 2017       
Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Germany

2016 – 2017       
Visiting Researcher, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan

2013 – 2016       
Research Scientist, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan

2012 – 2013       
Assistant Professor, Hiroshima University, Japan

With chronobiologist Hanspeter Herzel and musicologist Jin Hyun Kim, we would like to explore how biological rhythms and music are entangled through the history of time. The rhythms in our body have a natural time scale set by how the neurons and muscles are constructed. One example is vocal tremor. Music is a temporally organized code that expresses our internal mood states, but it also exploits these biological features to enrich its performance. The evolution of music can be compared to the evolution of humanity, and the ancient and various ethnic forms of music can be studied in connection with the principles of biological rhythms. Since music has been the window into consciousness, we hope this interdisciplinary study develops into a long-term research for the subjectivity of time. The approach we take is not abstract but concrete, since the context of time we focus on is based on musical structures and biological constraints.

Forschungsschwerpunkte

Neuroscience, Chronobiology, Molecular Biology, Computational Biology

2015     
A. Azzi/J. A. Evans/T. Leise/J. Myung/T. Takumi/A. J. Davidson/S. A. Brown, "Network Dynamics Mediate Circadian Clock Plasticity", in: Neuron. 93 (2017) 441–450.

J. Myung/S. Hong/D. DeWoskin/E. De Schutter/D. B. Forger/T. Takumi, "GABA-mediated Repulsive Coupling between Circadian Clock Neurons in the SCN Encodes Seasonal Time", in: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 112 (2015) E3920–E3929.

D. DeWoskin/J. Myung/M. D. C. Belle/H. D. Piggins/T. Takumi/D. B. Forger, "Distinct Roles for GABA across Multiple Timescales in Mammalian Circadian Timekeeping", in: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 112 (2015) E3911–E3919.

2014     
A. Goriki/F. Hatanaka/J. Myung/J. K. Kim/T. Yoritaka/S. Tanoue/T. Abe/H. Kiyonari/K. Fujimoto/Y. Kato/T. Todo/A. Matsubara/D. Forger/T. Takumi, "A Novel Protein, CHRONO, Functions as a Core Component of the Mammalian Circadian Clock", in: PLoS Biol. 12 (2014) e1001839.

2012     
J. Myung/S. Hong/F. Hatanaka/Y. Nakajima/E. De Schutter/T. Takumi, "Period Coding of Bmal1 Oscillators in the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus", in: J. Neurosci. 32 (2012) 8900–8918.