Dengzhe Hou (侯登哲)
I am a Project Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Information Sciences (GSIS), Tohoku University, Japan (from April 2026), affiliated with the Yamada Laboratory and the International Liaison Office (ILO). I hold a JSPS DC2 Research Fellowship (2025–2026). I received my Ph.D. and M.S. from Tohoku University GSIS under the supervision of Prof. Satoshi Shioiri at the Visual Cognition and Systems Laboratory. Previously I was a Visiting PhD Scholar at Harvard Medical School / Massachusetts General Hospital (Aug 2024 – Jan 2025) in the Sydney Cash Lab, supervised by Dr. Jing (Jill) Cai, where I trained in stereo-EEG (sEEG), hyperscanning, and the neural mechanisms of speech and interactive communication.
My research bridges cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence. I am broadly interested in aligning brain signals (EEG, fMRI) with large-scale AI models (LLMs, vision-language models) to compare their internal representations, and in using insights from cognitive science and neuroscience to guide the design and optimization of AI systems. My earlier work focused on the neural mechanisms of voluntary attentional control using EEG/sEEG recordings, eye-tracking, and computational modeling.
Research Interests
- Neural–AI alignment: comparing representations in EEG/fMRI and large language/vision models
- Brain-inspired AI: using cognitive and neural principles to optimize AI architectures
- Visual attention and self-initiated attentional control
- Eye movement–EEG integration (gaze-contingent paradigms; saccade and microsaccade dynamics)
- Decision-related neural dynamics and computational modeling (accumulation-to-bound, time–frequency analysis)
- Neural decoding (EEG, sEEG, MEG, hyperscanning)
News
| May 2026 | Updated preprint: WMF-AM v2 reframes our LLM probe around working-memory depth and isolates cumulative state tracking as the dominant bottleneck |
| Apr 2026 | Started as Project Assistant Professor, GSIS, Tohoku University (Yamada Lab + ILO) |
| Apr 2026 | Teaching Machine Learning Basics at GSIS, Tohoku University |
| Mar 2026 | Paper accepted at CVPR 2026 Workshop VGBE: Physics-Aware Video Instance Removal Benchmark |
| Mar 2026 | New preprint on arXiv: Beyond Completion: Probing Cumulative State Tracking to Predict LLM Agent Performance |
| Feb 2026 | Participated in Qualia Structure Grant Meeting |
| Feb 2026 | Appeared in Journal Club: The Proliferation of Consciousness Theories: What can we do next? (Neural basis of Consciousness & Qualia Structure) |
| Dec 2025 | Paper published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience: frontal-midline theta ramping indexes self-initiated attention shifts |
| Apr 2025 | Awarded JSPS DC2 Research Fellowship |
| Jan 2025 | Returned from visiting scholar position at Harvard Medical School / MGH (Sydney Cash Lab, supervised by Dr. Jing (Jill) Cai) |
| Dec 2024 | Best Presentation Award, 32nd Doctoral Student Presentation, Tohoku University |
| Oct 2024 | Presented two posters at Society for Neuroscience 2024 |
| Aug 2024 | Started as Visiting PhD Scholar, Department of Neurology, MGH / Harvard Medical School |
| Jul 2024 | Two presentations at APCV 2024 (The 16th Asia Pacific Conference on Vision) |
| Aug 2023 | Oral presentation at ECVP 2023, Paphos, Cyprus; awarded ECVP Student Travel Award |
Education
| Ph.D. | Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University | Apr 2023 – Mar 2026 |
| Visual Cognition and Systems Lab · Graduate Program in Data Science (GPDS) | ||
| JST Next Generation Researcher Challenging Research Program | ||
| Thesis: Exploring Brain Mechanisms of Self-Initiated Attention Shift: Simultaneous Recording of EEG and Eye Movements | ||
| Advisors: Prof. Satoshi Shioiri, Prof. Shuichi Sakamoto, Prof. Chia-huei Tseng | ||
| M.S. | Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University | Apr 2021 – Mar 2023 |
| Visual Cognition and Systems Lab · GPDS (joined Apr 2022) | ||
| Advisors: Prof. Satoshi Shioiri, Prof. Chia-huei Tseng | ||
| B.E. | Electronic and Information Engineering (Automation), Tongji University | Sep 2016 – Jul 2020 |
| Advisor: Assoc. Prof. Xia Zhao | ||
| GPA 4.15 / 5.0 |
Teaching
Instructor, Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University
| Machine Learning Basics | GSIS, Tohoku University (GPDS) | Apr 2026 – present |
| Course materials adapted from Samy Baladram |
Teaching Assistant, Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University (2022 – 2025)
Supervisors: Prof. Kazunori Yamada, Assoc. Prof. Samy Baladram
| Machine Learning Basics | Spring 2024 |
| Data Science Programming Basics | Spring 2024 |
| Data Engineering | Spring 2024 |
| Data Science Training I | Spring 2022, Spring 2024 |
| Data Science Training II | Spring 2024 |
| Data Science Basic | Fall 2023 |
| Data Science Skill Up Exercise | Spring 2022 |
Fellowships & Awards
| 2026 | Kaggle Expert – Bronze Medal, CSIRO Image2Biomass Prediction (354/3803) |
| 2025 | JSPS DC2 Research Fellowship |
| 2025 | Kaggle Bronze Medal, Santa 2024: The Perplexity Permutation Puzzle (148/1514) |
| 2024–2028 | KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A): 自発的脳機能の神経基盤理解 (PI: Prof. Satoshi Shioiri) |
| 2024 | Best Presentation Award, 32nd Doctoral Student Presentation, Tohoku University |
| 2023 | ECVP Student Travel Award |
| 2023–2025 | JST Next Generation Researcher Challenging Research Program |
| 2022–present | Tohoku University GPDS Research Assistant |
| 2021–2023 | Kamei Memorial Foundation Scholarship for International Students (公益財団法人亀井記念財団) |
| 2016 | Tongji University Undergraduate Entrance Scholarship |
Reviewer
- Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation
- Scientific Reports
- Discover Neuroscience
- European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD 2026)
- International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN)