Dr. Satoru Otani (Researcher INSERM)

Vision Institute
Aging in Vision and Action Lab
CNRS – INSERM – Sorbonne University
17, rue Moreau F-75012 Paris, France
Phone: +33 (0)1 53 46 26 55

Satoru Otani is an INSERM researcher (CR1). His main interest is the cellular and molecular mechanisms of long-term synaptic plasticity in rodent prefrontal cortex. He has particularly studied how dopamine, an important neurotransmitter for prefrontal function, regulates synaptic plasticity and how dopamine-dependent plasticity is related to high-order cognitive function of prefrontal cortex, using various techniques including electrophysiology, neuropharmacology, neurochemistry, and behavioral manipulation. Currently, he studies the ameliorating effect of virtual reality visual input, designed to activate prefrontal cortex and dopamine system, on age-related cognitive declines using animal models.

He obtained his bachelor’s degree from Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1983. In 1989, he received the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D) from University of Otago, New Zealand (W.C. Abraham’s lab). After postgraduate studies in INSERM U29 (Y. Ben-Ari), University of Virginia (W.B. Levy), Roche Institute of Molecular Biology (J.A. Connor), and University of Paris-Sud (F. Crepel), he acquired the INSERM position in 1997 and worked until 2012 as a principal investigator and group leader in University of Paris 6 (CNRS-UMR7102 directed by J. Mariani and INSERM U952/CNRS-UMR7224 directed by B. Giros). He received HDR from University of Paris 6 in 2001. From 2012 to 2018, he worked in Japan as a professor in Ryotokuji University Medical Education Center before returning to Paris in 2018 to focus on research again. In Japan, he served as a member for the national university entrance examination committee (Biology section, Japanese Ministry of Science and Technology; 2015-2017). He currently serves as an executive organizer for Japan-France Biological Society.

Keywords:  prefrontal cortex, synaptic plasticity, dopamine, long-term potentiation, long-term depression, executive function, learning and memory, neuromodulators, aging, virtual reality, cellular neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience.

 

 CV and Publication List (pdf): [ download ]

 

Publications

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2010

  1. Sheynikhovich D, Otani S and Arleo A (2010) A modeling study of the role of tonic vs. phasic dopamine input to the prefrontal cortex. In Gervais, R. et al., editors, Proceedings of the Fifth french conference on computational neuroscience (Neurocomp), pages 77-81.

2009

  1. Sheynikhovich D, Otani S and Arleo A (2009) Role of dopamine for long-term plasticity in the rat prefrontal cortex: a computational model. In Renaud, S. and Saighi, S., editors, Proceedings of the Fourth french conference on computational neuroscience (Neurocomp), vol. 4, pages 30.