Tomonori Takeuchi’s overall research goal is to understand how memories of everyday events, initially stored in the hippocampus, are ‘selected’ and then ‘assimilated’ into a relevant knowledge structure, called schema, in the neocortex. He comes from Professor Richard Morris’s lab in the UK where he has established himself as an expert on molecular mechanisms of learning and memory. In DANDRITE, he will explore the systems-level molecular mechanisms of selective retention of trivial memory through neuromodulation and the assimilation of this retained memory into the relevant schema, using sophisticated behavioral tests in rats combined with cutting-edge molecular techniques.

Tomonori is the recipient of Novo Nordisk Foundation Young Investigator Award 2017 of DKK 20 million for a seven-year period and besides being a DANDRITE Team Leader he is an AIAS-COFUND fellow at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), and associate professor at Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University.