Department of Physiology, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo

Research

Various firing patterns of many cortical neurons execute information processing in the brain. The cytoarchitecture of inter- and intra-layer local connections and layer-specific inputs and outputs control the information flows in cortical circuits. The aim of our laboratory is to reveal how information is formed, maintained, selected, and decoded in the brain at the levels of single-neuron and population activities. To do so, we mainly use two-photon microscopy that allows us to see fluorescence signals from deep within living tissue, developing novel photostimulation methods and animal behavioral tasks. The goals of our recent studies are to reveal how voluntary movement is memorized and represented in specific cortical layers and specific types of neurons. In addition, we are challenging to apply two-photon microscopy to non-human primate in order to understand the information processing in the brain, which is relevant to high cognitive functions.