Hiroshi Ito receives prestigious prize from Japan Neuroscience Society
Hiroshi Ito has been awarded the Young Investigator Award of the Japan Neuroscience Society for his investigation of functional impact and modulatory mechanism of distinct inputs to the hippocampus. The award will be presented at the annual meeting of the Japan Neuroscience Society in July 2017.
During his PhD study at the Schuman Lab in Caltech, Hiroshi discovered that neuromodulators dopamine and norepinephrine play a crucial role in differential control of synaptic inputs from two cortical regions -lateral and medial entorhinal cortices- to the hippocampus. In his postdoctoral work at the Moser Lab in Trondheim (Norway), Hiroshi Ito investigated a functional role of a third input to the hippocampus.
He found that the thalamic nucleus reuniens is a key anatomical node to transfer information from the prefrontal cortex to the hippocampus especially for spatial navigation. Both studies together have provided a better understanding of neural computation performed in the hippocampus.The Max Planck Institute for Brain Research congratulations Hiroshi Ito on this great effort.