Sachie Ogawa Kitamura, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Dr. Ogawa received a bachleor's degree in Biology from Kitasato University in Japan, and master degree in Biology from Kyushu University in Japan. She obtained her Ph.D. in Medical Science from Kurume University, where she studied physiological mechanisms of hippocampal neurons effected by volatile anesthetics using in vitro electrophysiological technique (Ogawa et al., Neuropharmacology, 2011).

After an assistant professor at Kumamoto Health Science University in Japan, she conducted neural circuits connectome for neuromodulators, as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Department of Molecular and Cellular biology in Harvard University. She used modified rabies virus technique combined with transgenic mice to enable to trace cell-type specific input to two major neuromodulators, serotonin and dopamine which play important roles for flexible behaviors (Ogawa et al, Cell Reports, 2014). After that, as a Postdoctoral Associate at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in MIT, she studied specific neuronal circuits how memory is processed in the brain (Kitamura, Ogawa, and Roy et al., Science 2017). 

Dr. Ogawa joined the Department of Psychiatry in 2017.

• Circuit dissections for learning related neuronal organizations
• Global neuronal activity for memory
• Regulation of neurotransmitter mechanisms

Featured Publications

Organization of dopamine and serotonin system: Anatomical and functional mapping of monosynaptic inputs using rabies virus.

Ogawa SK, Watabe-Uchida M Pharmacol. Biochem. Behav. 2017 May

Engrams and circuits crucial for systems consolidation of a memory.

Kitamura T, Ogawa SK, Roy DS, Okuyama T, Morrissey MD, Smith LM, Redondo RL, Tonegawa S Science 2017 Apr 356 6333 73-78

Organization of monosynaptic inputs to the serotonin and dopamine neuromodulatory systems.

Ogawa SK, Cohen JY, Hwang D, Uchida N, Watabe-Uchida M Cell Rep 2014 Aug 8 4 1105-18

Volatile anesthetic effects on isolated GABA synapses and extrasynaptic receptors.

Ogawa SK, Tanaka E, Shin MC, Kotani N, Akaike N Neuropharmacology 2011 Mar 60 4 701-10

Distinct Neural Circuits for the Formation and Retrieval of Episodic Memories.

Roy DS, Kitamura T, Okuyama T, Ogawa SK, Sun C, Obata Y, Yoshiki A, Tonegawa S Cell 2017 Aug 170 5 1000-1012.e19

Dopamine neurons projecting to the posterior striatum form an anatomically distinct subclass.

Menegas W, Bergan JF, Ogawa SK, Isogai Y, Umadevi Venkataraju K, Osten P, Uchida N, Watabe-Uchida M Elife 2015 Aug 4 e10032

Potent cough suppression by physiologically active substance in human plasma.

Akaike N, Ito Y, Ogawa SK, Maeda M, Wakita M, Takahama K, Noguchi T, Kamei S, Hamamoto T, Umehashi M, Maeda H Gen. Physiol. Biophys. 2014 33 2 145-55

Effects of selenoprotein P on the contraction and relaxation of the airway smooth muscle.

Ogawa SK, Shin MC, Hirashima M, Akaike N, Ito Y Gen. Physiol. Biophys. 2013 Mar 32 1 47-54

Effects of halothane on GABAergic and glutamatergic transmission in isolated hippocampal nerve-synapse preparations.

Kotani N, Wakita M, Shin MC, Ogawa S, Nonaka K, Akaike N Brain Res. 2012 Sep 1473 9-18

Whole-brain mapping of direct inputs to midbrain dopamine neurons.

Watabe-Uchida M, Zhu L, Ogawa SK, Vamanrao A, Uchida N Neuron 2012 Jun 74 5 858-73

• Association for Neurons and Brain Disease (2014)
• Society for Japanese Neuroscience (2014)
• Society for Neuroscience (2011)
• Physiological Society of Japan (2010)