Professional Shogi players have built up their intuitive thought in Shogi game for many years. A clue to understand the mechanisms of thinking part or brain is expected to be found in the process that Shogi players judge the current situation and determine the next move in the game by long deliberation, instantaneous intuition and flash of intuition.

This project aims to understand the intuitive thinking mechanism of human beings by elucidating the neural information processing network in the Shogi game through detailed analysis of how Shogi players judge the current situation and determine the next move. Specifically,, the three BSI laboratories conduct comparative study of professional and amateur Shogi players’ brain activities, making up Shogi problems and using electroencephalogram analysis and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).