Sachie 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

Brain-wide mapping reveals that engrams for a single memory are distributed across multiple brain regions.

Roy DS, Park YG, Kim ME, Zhang Y, Ogawa SK, DiNapoli N, Gu X, Cho JH, Choi H, Kamentsky L, Martin J, Mosto O, Aida T, Chung K, Tonegawa S, Nat Commun 2022 Apr 13 1 1799

Hippocampal-amygdala memory circuits govern experience-dependent observational fear.

Terranova JI, Yokose J, Osanai H, Marks WD, Yamamoto J, Ogawa SK, Kitamura T, Neuron 2022 Feb

Neuronal Ensembles Organize Activity to Generate Contextual Memory.

Marks WD, Yokose J, Kitamura T, Ogawa SK, Front Behav Neurosci 2022 16 805132

Entorhinal cortical Island cells regulate temporal association learning with long trace period.

Yokose J, Marks WD, Yamamoto N, Ogawa SK, Kitamura T, Learn Mem 2021 09 28 9 319-328

Novel nose poke-based temporal discrimination tasks with concurrent in vivo calcium imaging in freely moving mice.

Marks WD, Osanai H, Yamamoto J, Ogawa SK, Kitamura T, Mol Brain 2019 Nov 12 1 90

Adult hippocampal neurogenesis for systems consolidation of memory.

Terranova JI, Ogawa SK, Kitamura T, Behav. Brain Res. 2019 Oct 372 112035

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