Getting to know... Nao Tsuchiya
Dr Nao Tsuchiya
Name: Naotsugu (Nao) Tsuchiya
Title: Associate Professor
Faculty/Division: School of Psychology and Psychiatry
Dept: Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences
Campus: Clayton
How long have you worked at Monash?
Since January 2012
Where did you work prior to starting at the University?
At Advanced Telecommunication Research (ATR) in Kyoto, Japan.
What do you like best about your role?
I like the times when I discuss ideas with my colleagues, trying to come up with most crazy experiments ever that could solve the mystery of the strangest phenomenon in the world: consciousness.
Why did you choose your current career path?
I chose neuroscientific studies of consciousness because the question of why some, but not all, electrochemical activity in the brain can produce conscious experience, is so strange and intriguing. Plus, I can test so many ideas easily and cheaply by using myself as an experimental subject.
First job?
A bartender at the Gion district in Kyoto.
Worst job?
Security at a soccer studium. Got bitten by mosquitoes all over my body.
What research/projects are you currently working on and what does it involve?
I’m trying to quantify the level of consciousness in different organisms (from humans through to monkeys to flies) in different states (from awake through to sleep and under anaesthesia) by applying methods based on information theory to the real neuronal recording.
What is your favourite place in the world and why?
I like travelling around the world. There are many places I want to visit before I die.
What is your favourite place to eat and why?
There is a special cuisine called Kawadoko in Kyoto. We eat tasty traditional Kyoto-style Japanese food, and we do so on the tatami mats placed over the river in the mountain. It’s available only during summer. The setting and taste is so special that you won’t forget it.
What is the best piece of advice you have received?
My recent favourite is Simon Sinek’s “The Golden Circle” TED talk. Very inspiring.
Tell us something about yourself that your colleagues wouldn’t know?
When I was rejected by all the US grad schools, I still went to the US and worked as a volunteer research assistant, working like a crazy. By proving my usefulness as a potential student, I ended up getting into the graduate program that I really wanted to enter, though I had been rejected by the very same program earlier that year. Sometimes persistence pays off.