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Research findings of Dr. Ichiro Aoki and Dr. Ikue Mori’s team were published on-line in Communications Biology.

2018.09.05
The research team of Dr. Ichiro Aoki and NSI Director Ikue Mori has newly associated epilepsy-related genetic mutations with the rate of learning in C. elegans, in a joint research with the National Institute for Physiological Sciences. The findings may possibly lead to the identification of the molecular mechanisms of epilepsy in the future.

Their findings were published on-line in Communications Biology on August 24, 2018.

This work was supported in part by the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) under the title “Molecular and neural bases of memory updating in C. elegans.”

Article Information:
The article, "SLO potassium channels antagonize premature decision making in C. elegans", was published in the Communications Biology at doi:10.1038/s42003-018-0124-5.

Research findings of Dr. Azusa Kamikouchi and PhD student Daichi Yamada’s team were published in the Journal of Neuroscience, and covered on the NHK news.

2018.04.25
The research team of Dr. Azusa Kamikouchi, Dr. Hiroshi Ishimoto and PhD student Daichi Yamada has newly discovered a brain mechanism in fruit flies for distinguishing sound pulses. Their findings were published in the Journal of Neuroscience on April 17, and also covered on the NHK morning news of the same date.

Article Information:
The article, "GABAergic local interneurons shape female fruit fly response to mating songs", was published in the Journal of Neuroscience at doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3644-17.2018.

Research findings of Dr. Azusa Kamikouchi and PhD student Xiaodong Li’s team were published in eLife.

2018.04.02
The research team of Dr. Azusa Kamikouchi, Dr. Hiroshi Ishimoto and PhD student Xiaodong Li has discovered a novel learning phenomenon in fruit flies, in which adult flies learn to identify the courtship song of their own species and behave accordingly when exposed to the song soon after eclosion. The team also identified the neurons responsible for this learned behavior and the neurotransmitter involved in this learning process. Their findings were published in eLife on March 20, and also featured in the Chunichi Shimbun on March 23 (article link).

Additional media coverages include the following:




This work received support from the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “Principles of memory dynamism elucidated from a diversity of learning systems” awarded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology.

Article Information:
The article, "Auditory experience controls the maturation of song discrimination and sexual response in Drosophila", was published in eLife at doi:10.7554/eLife.34348.