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Center for Human Disease Models, Disease Information Lab
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A neuroscience lab that approaches the origins of brain function through the development of neural circuits.
AboutAbout the lab
Approaching the origins of brain function through neural circuit development
The Imai Lab, part of the Disease Information division, studies how neural circuits in the brain are built and how they work.
The brain is a network in which about 100 billion neurons are intricately connected, and the lab believes that tracing its developmental process leads to the essence of the brain.
Focusing mainly on the mouse olfactory system and cerebral cortex, the lab examines the activity and morphology of neurons under the microscope, and also develops its own observation technologies, such as methods for making brain tissue transparent.
The lab is in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Kyushu University, and is in charge of physiology in undergraduate education.
Key terms
- Olfactory bulb
- The brain region where odor information from the nose first arrives. The information converges onto about 1,000 glomeruli
- Mitral cell
- A secondary neuron in the olfactory bulb. It is a neuron that receives sensory information from only a single glomerulus
- Tissue clearing
- A technology that reduces light scattering while preserving the shape and fluorescence of tissues such as the brain, making it possible to observe deep inside
NewsLab news
Lecturer Inagaki received the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award (Grand Prize) at the Advanced Technology Awards
Prof. Imai received the 2nd Tokuo Fujii Award
A paper on a reagent that can make tissue transparent while it is still alive was published in Nature Methods
A paper on synapse formation in the adolescent cerebral cortex was published in Science Advances
A method for labeling neurites in multiple colors and analyzing them automatically was published in Nature Communications
ResearchResearch themes
The lab studies how neural circuits develop, aiming to approach the origins of brain function. Mainly in the mouse olfactory system and cerebral cortex, it studies three aspects: the operating principles of neural circuits, the structure of circuits, and the mechanisms by which circuits are formed.
*Illustrative imagePrinciples of processing sensory information such as odors
The lab studies how odor information is processed in the olfactory epithelium of the nose and in the olfactory bulb of living animals. It found that responses to mixed odors can be either smaller or larger than the sum of the responses to the individual odors, and that the temporal patterns of mitral cell activity represent odors.
*Illustrative imageTracing the whole picture of neural circuits with light microscopy
The lab develops technologies to capture the whole picture of neural circuits with light microscopy. It has created the tissue clearing methods SeeDB and SeeDB2 and a method for labeling neurons in many colors, and is also developing tools to automatically reconstruct circuits from microscope images.
*Illustrative imageHow olfactory circuits are formed
The lab studies how mitral cells in the olfactory bulb prune the many dendrites they have after birth down to a single one, so that each connects to only one glomerulus. It found that "lateral inhibition" that depends on synaptic input is involved.
*Illustrative imageSynapse analysis toward understanding psychiatric disorders
Using its own clearing technology, the lab examines synapses on a large scale and analyzes abnormalities during development and in disease. It found that the distribution of spines in the cerebral cortex changes greatly during adolescence, and is studying its relationship to schizophrenia.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Imai Lab consist of faculty, researchers, PhD, master's, and undergraduate students, and technical staff.As of 2026
- Professor (Senior Chief Professor)Takeshi Imai
- LecturerShigenori Inagaki
- Assistant ProfessorSatoshi Fujimoto
- Assistant ProfessorTakahiro Noda
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “PLoSBiol4.e126.Fig6fNeuron” Wei-Chung Allen Lee, Hayden Huang, Guoping Feng, Joshua R. Sanes, Emery N. Brown, Peter T. So, Elly Nedivi / CC BY 2.5 (cropped)
- Principles of processing sensory information such as odors: “Smell and wikidata (blue)” Lajmmoore / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Tracing the whole picture of neural circuits with light microscopy: “Optical microscope for the study of paint fragments” Froselong / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- How olfactory circuits are formed: “Olfactory Sensory Neurons innervating Olfactory Glomeruli” Noodle brain / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Synapse analysis toward understanding psychiatric disorders: “Synapse figure” Curtis Neveu / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Neuroanatomy Lab): “Sagittal brain slice, UB Museum of Neuroanatomy, Buffalo, New York” Caldwbr / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Developmental and Regenerative Medicine Lab): “Mouse embryo ( )” Pazit Polak from Basel, Switzerland / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Medical Chemistry Lab): “DNA Structure+Key+Labelled.pn NoBB” Zephyris / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Biochemistry Lab): “A Pathway to Protocells on Titan – Animations (SVS -Cell-Membrane-Thumbnail)” NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio - NASA Goddard / Public domain (cropped)
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