Ryutaro
Uchiyama

Education

2021                       PhD, Psychological and Behavioural Science

                                London School of Economics and Political Science

                                Thesis title: Cultural evolutionary production of human psychobiological 

                                                     variation and function

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2017                       MA, Psychology (Behavioral and Evolutionary Neuroscience)

                                Cornell University, US

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2013                       BSc with Greatest Honors, Psychology

                                University of Lethbridge, Canada

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2006                       Technical Diploma in Spatial Design

                                Kuwasawa Design School, Japan

Research positions

2021–                     Research Fellow

                                NTU–Cambridge Centre for Lifelong Learning and Individualised  

                                Cognition (CLIC),

                                Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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2017                       Research Programmer

                           Section of Brain Function Information,

                                National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan

Other employment

2003–2013            Freelance Japanese–English translator/editor for art and design     

                                publications (list of translated works below)

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2006–2007             Junior interior & furniture designer

                                Design Office IMA

                                Tokyo, Japan

Publications

Uchiyama R, Spicer R, & Muthukrishna M. (in press). Cultural evolution of genetic heritability. Behavioral and Brain Sciences (Target Article) [PDF] [journal] [press release]

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Uchiyama R & Muthukrishna M. (in press). Cultural evolutionary neuroscience. In J Chiao, S Li, B Turner, SY Lee-Tauler, B Pringle (Eds.), Handbook of Cultural Neuroscience and Global Mental Health. Oxford University Press. [PsyArXiv]

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Finlay BL & Uchiyama R. (2020). The timing of brain maturation, early experience and the human social niche. In J. Kaas (Ed.), Evolutionary Neuroscience, Second Edition, 815-843. San Diego: Elsevier Academic Press. [PDF]

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Uchiyama R & Muthukrishna M. (2019). Archetypes are a poor primitive for a theory of mental representations. Psychological Inquiry, 30. 87–92. [PDF]

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Smolla M, Invernizzi E, Bazhydai M, Casoli M, Deffner D, Faria GS, Jones N, Kanwal J, Staehler AM, Uchiyama R. (2018). Second annual workshop of the Association of Early-Career Social Learning Researchers in St Andrews, Scotland. Evolutionary Anthropology, 27, 184-187. [PDF]

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Finlay BL & Uchiyama R. (2015). Developmental mechanisms channeling cortical evolution. Trends in Neurosciences, 38, 69–76. [PDF]

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Pre-publication

Pham TQ, Yoshimoto T, Niwa H, Takahashi H, Uchiyama R, Matsui T, Anderson AK, Sadato N, & Chikazoe J. (under review). Vision-to-value transformation of art in artificial neural networks and human neural networks.

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Uchiyama R, Spicer R, & Muthukrishna M. (under review). Cultural variance reduces the heritability of psychological, behavioral, and psychiatric traits.

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Conference presentations

2019        Poster— Uchiyama R & Muthukrishna M. "The cultural evolution of cultural   

                   learning". Early-career Social Learning Researchers workshop (Lepizig, Germany)

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2018          Talk— Uchiyama R & Muthukrishna M. "General intelligence as an emergent  

                   product of cultural complexity: Explaining the Flynn Effect".

                   Cultural Evolution Society (Tempe, AZ, USA)

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2018          Poster— Uchiyama R & Muthukrishna M. "Testing the Cultural Brain  

                   Hypothesis using phylogenetic path analysis".

                   Early-career Social Learning Researchers workshop (St Andrews, Scotland, UK)

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2017          Talk— Uchiyama R & Muthukrishna M. "Testing the cultural brain hypothesis".  

                   Cultural Evolution Society inaugural conference (Jena, Germany)

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2016          Poster— Uchiyama R & Edelman S. "Narrative-mediated transmission of  

                   causal knowledge".

                   Emergent Meaning: Neural, Social, & Computational Perspectives (Bethlehem, PA),                    a workshop associated with Cognitive Science Society (Philadelphia, PA, US)
 

2015          Poster— Uchiyama R & Finlay BL. "Situating social learning in an evolutionarily 

                   conserved program of brain development".

                   Mechanisms of Learning in Social Contexts, a workshop at ICDL-EPIROB   

                   (Providence, RI, US)

Organization

2018–2020         LSE PBS PhD Committee member

                               Member of a PhD committee responsible for academic self-    

                               governance in the department of Psychological and Behavioural Science

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2015                      Cognitive and evolutionary approaches to human culture

                               Lead organizer and panel moderator of a cross-disciplinary symposium   

                               (March 12, 2015, at Cornell University) – http://cogevo.weebly.com/

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2014–2015            Collective Behavior Study Group, Cornell University

                               Co-founder and organizer of an inter-departmental graduate student     

                                journal club and speaker series – http://collectivebehavior.weebly.com/

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Teaching and outreach

Course Design

Co-designed with another graduate student the full syllabus for HD 6400–Emergent Collective Behavior, offered by the Department of Human Development, Cornell University (Spring 2014)

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Teaching Assistantships

• London School of Economics—

MSc Social and Public Communication (Martin Bauer & Bradley Franks, 2018–2020), Foundations of Psychological Science (Michael Muthukrishna, 2018–2019)
• Cornell University—

Developmental Psychology (Michael Goldstein, 2014)

Computational Psychology (Shimon Edelman, 2015)

Introduction to Biopsychology (Tim Devoogd, 2015)

Psychology of Language (Morten Christiansen, 2016)

Human Perception (David Field, 2016)

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Neuroanatomy instruction

Managed brain dissection wet labs and neuroanatomy tutorials for PSYCH4250–Cognitive Neuroscience (Barbara Finlay), Cornell University, 2014–2015

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Neuroscience outreach

2014–2016, Assistant Curator for the Wilder Brain Collection, Cornell University

         Sample coverage [ media ] [ youtube ] (Oct 7, 2016)

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Invited talks

2021                      Claremont Graduate University, seminar speaker for Prof. Robert
                               Kiltgaard's course "Cultural Competence"

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2020                      盐 (Yan) Talk, Human Psychology Seminar Series
                               (online talk for an audience in the People’s Republic of China)

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2019                      Meiji University, School of Interdisciplinary Mathematical Sciences, Joe   

                               Wakano Lab (Japan)

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2019                      LSESU Behavioural Sciences Society Annual Conference (London)

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