Daniel Yasumasa Takahashi
Life Sciences
Driven by a fascination with the differences between humans and animals, Daniel Yasumasa Takahashi, a neuroscientist by day and a mathematician by night, sets out to measure the differences between the two with the power of mathematics. Above all, he is motivated by the quest for discovery.
His journey led him to earn degrees in both medicine and mathematics at the University of São Paulo, where he also completed a PhD in bioinformatics and a postdoctoral fellowship. He continued his research with a second postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University. Daniel’s current project is to analyze culturally transmitted vocal dialects in marmosets, a primate with populations throughout Brazil, to shed light on the evolution of vocal communication. In his spare time, he finds expression through the language of music, playing the cello. He also enjoys the serene beauty of the dunes of northeastern Brazil.
Projects
Imagine traveling to a foreign country where you can’t understand the language. This barrier is not due to the content but to the difficulty in understanding the sounds made by people. With over 6,000 languages and dialects spoken worldwide, communication barriers are a common experience for human travelers since around 80% of people communicate effectively only in their native communities. This starkly contrasts other primates, where we assume that individuals typically understand each other’s vocalizations regardless of geographic origin. But are humans truly alone in this vocal diversity? Recent research suggests that marmosets, small monkeys found in the forests of Brazil, may also have culturally transmitted vocal dialects. This project aims to confirm this phenomenon.
