Japan

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS
The Japanese research Consortium, COCORO led by Professor Ryota Hashimoto, is partnering with ENIGMA to study a range of questions about mental health and brain aging, comparing data from Japanese populations to data from the rest of the world. There is a remarkable agreement in the sets of brain measures associated with mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression; however, differences in mortality between Japan and other countries motivate the ENIGMA World Aging Center's effort to identify factors that consistently affect brain aging internationally and whether they operate differently in different environments and cultures.

OUR COLLABORATORS

Ryota Hashimoto, MD, PhD
National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry
Ryota Hashimoto, MD, PhD, is the director of the Department of Pathology of Mental Diseases at the National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry in Japan. Dr. Hashimoto is a member of the ENIGMA-Schizophrenia Working Group.
Masaki Fukunaga, PhD
National Institute for Physiological Sciences
Masaki Fukunaga, PhD, is an Associate Professor of the Division of Cerebral Integration at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan. Dr. Fukunaga is a member of the ENIGMA-Schizophrenia Working Group.
Yearly Income and Lifespan rate change in Japan from 1800 to 2018 (data from Gapminder.org)
Schizophrenia and the Brain: A ranking of brain measures – in order of how strongly they differ in schizophrenia from matched controls – is strikingly similar in ENIGMA studies and in work by the Japanese Consortium COCORO. A positive effect size means that patients with schizophrenia had larger volumes than healthy controls.