EurekAlert! Japan News - News Releases from Japan

News from Japan

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 22-Oct-2026 21:16 ET (23-Oct-2026 01:16 GMT/UTC)

How dopamine modulates brain circuits of motivation in a behavioral addiction model

Kanazawa University

Researchers at Kanazawa University identified dopamine-driven neural mechanisms of motivation in a mouse model of behavioral addiction, offering insights into treatment.

Journal: Neuropsychopharmacology

Paramedics bridging medical care and community support: status of collaboration between prehospital emergency care and community-based long-term, welfare, and health organizations in Japan

Kanazawa University

A research group led by Dr. Keiko Ueno, Assistant Professor at the Innovative Clinical Research Center, Kanazawa University, has revealed the status of collaboration between fire-based emergency medical service (EMS) agencies ^*1) and community-based long-term care ^*2), welfare ^*3), and health organizations ^*4) in Japan. The study identified six key practical measures essential for building a collaborative model that sustains long-term coordination between medical care and social support needs.

Journal: Prehospital Emergency Care

Going up against the heat: Vertical greenery keeps cities cool

Osaka Metropolitan University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

An international research team led by Osaka Metropolitan University researchers evaluated the impacts of urban heat island mitigation strategies on both indoor and outdoor thermal environments in an educational facility located in Shahrud, Iran, a city characterized by extremely hot summers.

Journal: Energy and Buildings

It takes two to tango: How to perform coordinated pair dances in cranes?

The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI
Peer-Reviewed Publication

What components of elaborate pair dances serve mutual signals? Japanese researchers revealed that the sequence and timing of behaviors play a crucial role in the pair dances of the red-crowned cranes. The study provides a novel framework for identifying the structure of bidirectional communication in animals. These results were published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

Journal: Animal Behaviour
Funder: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Distant ocean temperatures found to influence snowfall in Antarctica

Research Organization of Information and Systems
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Snowfall deep inside East Antarctica has increased in recent decades, and distant ocean temperature changes may be partly responsible. Using long-term climate data and observations from Dome Fuji station, researchers found that the increase in snowfall is strongly linked to atmospheric blocking patterns that carry moist air into inland Antarctica. These patterns are, in turn, influenced by sea surface temperature changes in the subtropical South Atlantic Ocean—highlighting important climate connections across vast distances.

Journal: Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres
Funder: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

AI deciphers how fast ALS progresses and which functions decline first

Nagoya University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that gradually affects a person's ability to move, speak, and breathe. It advances differently in every patient. Now, researchers at Nagoya University have developed an AI tool that uses data from patient follow-up studies to estimate the speed of disease progression and identify patterns of muscle decline. The study was published in npj Digital Medicine.

Journal: npj Digital Medicine
Funder: JST CREST, JST Moonshot R&D–MILLENNIA Program, JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists, Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) Multidisciplinary Frontier Brain and Neuroscience Discoveries (Brain/MINDS 2.0)

Family unification in a six-dimensional theory with an orthogonal gauge group

Osaka Metropolitan University

An Osaka Metropolitan University research team proposed a simple model of family unification that produces a model of 5D gauge-Higgs unification incorporating a three-generation structure.

Journal: Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics

Interpretable AI in materials discovery: Uncovering how models make predictions

Institute of Science Tokyo
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A method to interpret artificial intelligence (AI) models used in materials discovery by analyzing their learned features has been developed by researchers from Japan. The method extracts key features from an AI model trained on atomic structural data and optical absorption spectra, and then groups materials with similar structural and spectral characteristics. This approach can be extended to reveal how atomic arrangements influence other material properties, paving the way for more efficient materials design.

Journal: Advanced Intelligent Discovery
Funder: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Kanagawa Institute of Industrial Science and Technology

Development of an ultra-high-resolution CT system with approximately five-fold improved spatial resolution

Kanazawa University

A research group led by Professor Katsuhiro Ichikawa (Faculty of Health Sciences, Institute of Medical, Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences, Kanazawa University) and Professor Kaoru Tada (Faculty of Health Sciences / Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Kanazawa University Hospital) has successfully developed an ultra-high-resolution X-ray computed tomography (CT) system dedicated to extremities, achieving approximately five times higher spatial resolution than conventional X-ray CT systems (voxel size: 0.08–0.10 mm).

Journal: Skeletal Radiology

Healthy lifespan cut short by sex-dependent depressive symptoms in older adults

Tohoku University
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Based on their 18-year long cohort study, researchers at Tohoku University have found which depressive symptoms have the most impact on the “healthspan” (remaining years of healthy living) of older adults, and how this differs for men compared to women.

Journal: Journal of Psychiatric Research

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