Title: How the Brain Builds Memories and the Meaning

Abstract:

Episodes are important for our daily life. In this seminar, I will introduce how episodic memories are formed, retrieved, and maintained over time, focusing on brain networks centered on the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex. I will highlight recent advances revealed by circuit-genetic approaches that have elucidated the neural circuit basis of memory. Furthermore, I will discuss how episodic memories are linked to higher cognitive functions such as self-representation, social cognition, and empathy, and how episodic experiences are gradually integrated into semantic memory and schemas. By exploring the underlying neural circuit mechanisms of these processes, this seminar aims to provide a conceptual framework for understanding how experience is transformed into structured knowledge and how memory is organized within the brain.

Short Bio:

Dr. Takashi Kitamura received his B.S. and Ph.D. in Biology from Kyushu University, Japan, where he studied the molecular mechanisms and functional roles of adult hippocampal neurogenesis. After postdoctoral training at the Mitsubishi-Kagaku Institute of Life Sciences and serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toyama, he joined the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT as a Research Scientist. In 2017, he joined the Department of Psychiatry at UT Southwestern Medical Center and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2023. His research investigates how hippocampal–entorhinal circuits form, store, and transform episodic memories into structured knowledge using circuit-genetic approaches, in vivo calcium imaging, electrophysiology, and behavioral analysis.