Kitamura Lab

Research

The formation and maintenance of long-term memories for episodes and spaces are vital for daily life. The goal of our laboratory is to provide a biophysically-based mechanistic understanding of the neural process for learning and memory in the mouse brain by linking the elementary information processing and representation mechanisms of individual neurons and their microcircuits to animal behaviors in the entorhinal cortical hippocampal network. We also try to understand how learning and memory processing is impaired under psychotic conditions. To address these questions, we will examine neural circuit mechanisms for the behavior-dependent optimization of the brain’s spatiotemporal metrics by using mouse circuit genetics, retrograde trans-synaptic tracing, in vivo calcium imaging, electrophysiology in vivo and in vitro, and circuits/cell-type specific activity manipulating analysis.

Meet the Principal Investigator

Takashi Kitamura

Takashi Kitamura, Ph.D., Associate Professor

Dr. Kitamura graduated with a bachelor's degree in Biology from Kyushu University in Japan. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biology at Kyushu University, where he studied molecular mechanisms and the functional role of adult hippocampal neurogenesis in rodent brains. After a Post-Doc at Mitsubishi-Kagaku institute of life science in Tokyo, Japan, and as an Assistant Professor at Toyama University in Japan, he conducted neural circuits genetics as a Research Scientist at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, where he applied techniques of advanced mouse genetics, cell-type specific neural tracing, in vivo calcium imaging, in vivo, and in vitro electrophysiology, and optogenetic manipulation techniques to understand how episodic memory is formed and stored in the brain. Dr. Kitamura joined the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry in 2017.

Lab Alumni

Norimichi Ito, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Nagoya University, Japan

Ryang Kim, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Tokyo, Japan

Joseph Terranova, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Midwestern University

William Marks, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Instruction at University of Texas Dallas