Welcome to the Yamamoto (yamajun) Lab
Many human patients who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and broad spectrum of psychosis, including schizophrenia, show a range of memory deficits along with the hippocampal - entorhinal cortex damage, yet little is known about how specific memories are accessed and formed into meaningful memories to accomplish given tasks, especially at the systems level. The Yamamoto Laboratory focuses on the neural dynamics for successful memory formation, access, and retrieval during episodic working memory tasks to elucidate the neural circuit mechanism in the hippocampal - cortical network.
The goal of our study is to uncover the neural dynamics of hippocampal - cortical memory system to extend our understanding of how the system malfunctions during psychotic states and to establish novel early-stage diagnostic measurements / analyses in human patients that are hinted by the animal in vivo recordings.
Current and near future studies include:
- Development of state-of-the-art high-density recording devices in freely behaving mice.
- Massive parallel recording of hippocampal – entorhinal cortex neurons and decoding neural content during episodic memory task in mice.
- High-temporal resolution optogenetic manipulations of hippocampal – entorhinal cortex neural circuits during memory access for causal assessment in mice.
- Network level neuronal oscillation and synchrony within hippocampal – cortical regions in Alzheimer’s disease model mice.
- Investigation of abnormal neuronal oscillatory activities in psychotic patients.