Mycorrhizal fungi live in symbiosis with the roots of trees, spreading countless mycelium throughout the soil using the photosynthetic products of the trees. Matsutake mushrooms and truffles are examples of such mycorrhizal fungi. Trees, on the other hand, use mycorrhizal fungi as a nutrient-absorbing organ that replaces the roots, thereby efficiently absorbing soil nutrients. In fact, many trees depend on mycorrhizal fungi for most of their nitrogen and phosphorus needs, and cannot grow normally without them. This presentation will focus on the functions, ecology, and evolution of the symbiosis between trees and mushrooms, which supports forests in ways we cannot see.

The mechanisms by which the (seemingly) intermingled analog and digital circuits of the brain represent and process information are still not well understood. In recent years, however, remarkable progress has been made in the study of the structure and dynamics of neural circuits. In this seminar, we will introduce approaches from physics and mathematics to decipher the functions of neural circuits and the "codes" exchanged in them.

Humans, along with apes and Old World monkeys, are classified as narrow-nosed primates. One of the characteristics of narrow-nosed monkeys is that they have trichromatic color vision. However, among the narrow-nosed monkeys, only humans have a remarkable diversity of color vision abnormalities, such as dichromatic (red-green color blindness) and trichromatic (color weakness). Why is this? Is it because advanced civilization has made color blindness no longer a disadvantage for survival? In recent years, research on the New World monkeys, a group of primates different from the narrow-nosed monkeys, has revealed that the two-color type has advantages over the three-color type, such as the ability to forage for camouflaged insects. I will introduce these studies and consider the significance of color vision diversity in the context of human evolutionary history.