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Ogawa Lab (Systems Neurobiology)
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The lab unravels cricket neural circuits in full, from input to output.
AboutAbout the lab
How the brain senses the world and initiates action.
The Ogawa Lab studies how animals sense the outside world, decide how to act, and carry out that action.
Using two cricket behaviors as models, the escape behavior triggered by air currents and the sound source localization behavior toward the male's calling song, the lab aims to give a complete account of the process, from stimulus reception through central information processing to motor control.
The Fukutomi group has also begun research on how electric communication and swimming movements are coordinated in weakly electric fish.
The lab's approach is built on electrophysiology and optical measurement (imaging), combined with virtual reality, treadmills, high-speed cameras, and machine-learning analysis.
Key terms
- Interneuron
- A neuron that connects sensory neurons and motor neurons and processes information between them
- Sound source localization
- The behavior of judging the direction a sound comes from and moving toward it
- Calcium imaging
- A method that detects with light the calcium that increases when neurons are active, making their activity visible
NewsLab news
Paper published visualizing the function of non-spiking neurons that respond to air currents
A master's student received the Excellent Presentation Award at the retreat workshop of the Hokkaido University Research and Education Center for Brain Science
Paper published revealing how information on stimulus direction is processed in stages in the insect brain
A master's student received the Junior Investigator Poster Award at the Annual Meeting of the Japan Neuroscience Society
Paper published showing that insects recognize their own body size
ResearchResearch themes
Using mainly the two-spotted cricket (Gryllus bimaculatus) as the experimental animal, the lab investigates escape behavior mediated by the air-current sensory system and sound source localization behavior mediated by the tympanal organ. The goal is to clarify how the neural systems responsible for sensory information processing and motor control are organized.
*Illustrative imageNavigation by sound source localization
Female crickets show sound source localization behavior, approaching the male's song. By quantitatively analyzing this behavior in an arena inside a soundproof room, the lab has shown that it divides into several phases. It will clarify the underlying neural mechanisms by measuring brain activity in an auditory VR environment.
*Illustrative imageInformation extraction by giant interneurons
Crickets have a pair of air-current-sensing organs on the tail (cerci), and their input is processed by a group of giant interneurons. By examining the dendrites of individual neurons with calcium imaging and intracellular recording, the lab is tracing how air-current direction is represented and extracted.
*Illustrative imageRepresenting direction through population activity
Sensory information is represented in the brain not by one specific neuron but by the activity of a population of neurons. Using Bayesian inference to decode stimulus direction from activity recorded from many neurons, the lab explores how air-current direction is represented and which neural circuits are involved.
*Illustrative imageMultisensory integration and walking
The cricket's tympanal organ receives not only songs of its own species but also high-frequency sounds like those made by bats, its predators. Because playing a high-frequency sound before an air-current stimulus changes the direction of escape and the response threshold, the lab is searching for the neurons involved in this change in behavior.
MembersFaculty
Members of the Ogawa Lab consist of faculty, graduate students, research students, and undergraduate students.As of 2025
- ProfessorHiroto Ogawa
- Assistant ProfessorMatasaburo Fukutomi
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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: “African.field.cricket.arp” Arpingstone / Public domain (cropped)
- Navigation by sound source localization: “Gryllus bimaculatus femelle” Hexasoft / Public domain (cropped)
- Information extraction by giant interneurons: “Insect neuron” NICHD / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Representing direction through population activity: “All that glitters in the brain” BrainsRusDC / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Multisensory integration and walking: “Austin Bat Bridge By Dan Pancamo” Dan Pancamo / CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
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