Memory selectivity and knowledge updating

Tomonori Takeuchi is a team leader at DANDRITE and associate professor at Department of Biomedicine, Aarhus University. Tomonori Takeuchi is an expert in the molecular mechanisms of learning and memory. Working with professor Richard Morris at the University of Edinburgh in the UK, he has recently made a ground-breaking finding (Takeuchi et al., Nature, 2016): projections from the noradrenergic locus coeruleus to the hippocampus can drive the novelty-induced memory enhancement via non-canonical release of dopamine.

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 (Tse, Takeuchi et al., Science, 2011). 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 behavioural 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.