Masao Ito

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Masao Itō ( Japanese 伊藤 正 男 , Itō Masao ; born December 4, 1928 in Nagoya ; † December 18, 2018 ) was a Japanese neuroscientist .

Itō studied medicine with an M.D. degree in 1953 and a doctorate in 1959 at the University of Tokyo . After completing his clinical training, he studied physiology from 1954 to 1957 at Kumamoto University and then at Tokyo University, where he received his doctorate in 1959. From 1959 to 1962 he was a post-doctoral student in the laboratory of John Eccles at the Australian National University . In 1963 he became an associate professor and in 1970 professor at the University of Tokyo. From 1986 to 1989 he was dean of his university. In 1990 he retired and became group leader and from 1993 Director General for Research at RIKEN .

Itō discovered the inhibitory role of the Purkinje cells in the cerebellum (cerebellum) and their characteristic synaptic plasticity (LTD, long term depression). He developed a theory of how the cerebellum not only learns motor skills, but also plays a role in implicit memory .

In 2006 he received the Gruber Prize for Neuroscience ; He also received the Ipsen Foundation Award (1993), the Robert Dow Neuroscience Award (1993) and high Japanese prizes (Fujiwara Prize 1981, Academy Prize and Imperial Prize 1986, Person with Special Cultural Merit 1994, Japan Prize 1996, Order of Culture 1996). From 1983 he was President of the Japanese Society for Neuroscience and from 1980 to 1986 President of the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO). He was a member of the Royal Swedish, Russian and Armenian Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the Japanese Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences . He was an honorary doctor from the University of Southern California and the University of Turin . Itō died in December 2018 at the age of 90.

Fonts

  • with John C. Eccles , J. Szentagothai: The Cerebellum as a Neuronal Machine , Springer-Verlag, 1967
  • The Cerebellum and Neural Control , Raven Press, 1984
  • (Eds.), Neural Programming , Tokyo 1988
  • (Ed.), Brain and Mind , Amsterdam 1997

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Itō, Masao
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 伊藤 正 男 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese neuroscientist
DATE OF BIRTH December 4, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Nagoya
DATE OF DEATH December 18, 2018