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Scientific conference Tutored Seminar
NeuroSchool seminar: Takuji Iwasato
Activity-dependent circuit maturation in the neonatal brain: Studies using the mouse barrel cortex.
Monday, may 22, 2023, the NeuroSchool PhD Program will invite Takuji Iwasato in Inmed, Luminy on the activity-dependent circuit maturation in the neonatal brain: Studies using the mouse barrel cortex.
Takuji is a Professor in National Institute of Genetics (NIG) and Graduate Institute for the Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI, Japan.
Precise neuronal connectivity in the mammalian neocortex is established through refinement during postnatal development. The primary somatosensory cortex (barrel cortex) of the mouse is a useful model to investigate the mechanisms of postnatal circuit maturation. In the mature barrel cortex, the configuration of whiskers on the face is topographically represented as “barrels”, discrete modules of layer 4 neurons and thalamocortical (TC) axon terminals. Spiny stellate cells, the major type of layer 4 excitatory neurons, that are located at the barrel edge expand basal dendrites asymmetrically toward the barrel center to form synapses with specific TC axons, which underlies the precise one-to-one functional relationship between whiskers and barrels. Importantly, these features of the whisker-barrel circuit are established essentially during the first postnatal week in a manner depending on presynaptic TC inputs and postsynaptic NMDA receptor functions. For decades, we have been using the mouse barrel cortex for the study of developmental plasticity by developing and adopting several original approaches (e.g. Iwasato et al., Neuron 1997, Nature 2000; Mizuno et al., Neuron 2014; Luo et al, Sci. Rep. 2017; Nakazawa et al., Nature Commun. 2018). In this seminar, I would like to discuss our recent findings by primarily focusing on mechanisms of dendritic refinement of barrel cortex layer 4 neurons.
Monday, May 22, 2023, Inmed Luminy
The schedule is as follows:
- 10:00 am – Discussion among students to discuss the papers – For PhD students only – online
- 11:00 am – Seminar – Open to all
- 12:00 pm – Special discussion time with the speaker for PhD students – online
📢 PhD students: register on AMETICE for your hours to be counted. Attendants get 3 hours, chairpersons 4 hours.
Register to Takuji Iwasato seminar
Biography
Takuji Iwasato is a Professor in National Institute of Genetics (NIG) and Graduate Institute for the Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI, Japan. Dr. Iwasato obtained his doctoral degree from Kyoto University, Japan in 1992 for studies of class switch recombination and V(D)J rearrangement in immune cell differentiation. His PhD work was supervised by Profs. Hideo Yamagishi and Tasuku Honjo. Immediately after obtaining his PhD, he switched his research field from immunology to neuroscience and did postdoctoral training in Prof. Susumu Tonegawa’s laboratory in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, where he learned mouse reverse genetics and started his current study of developmental plasticity using the mouse somatosensory system. In 1998 he came back to Japan and joined RIKEN Brain Science Institute
(Center for Brain Science), which was newly established then. In 2008 he started his own laboratory in NIG as a full professor. He was also the Dean of School of Life Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI for 3 years (FY2016, 2017, 2022).
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