Yasushi Nakagawa, MD, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience

E-MAIL: [email protected]

Research Interests:

In our laboratory, we are interested in how early events in brain development such as patterning of the neural tube and cell type specification eventually lead to the formation of specific neuronal connectivity and development of animal behavior. We are particularly interested in the thalamus and brain regions that are connected to the thalamus, including the neocortex. We extensively use mouse genetics and in vivo gene delivery to study: 1) how multiple thalamic nuclei are formed and 2) how the thalamus development influences the formation of mature areas in the neocortex.


Selected Publications:

(For a comprehensive list of recent publications, refer to PubMed, a service provided by the National Library of Medicine.)

  • Ghezzi F, Marques-Smith A, Anastasiades PG, Lyngholm D, Vagnoni C, Rowett A, Parameswaran G, Hoerder-Suabedissen A, Nakagawa Y, Molnar Z, Butt SJ. Non-canonical role for Lpar1-EGFP subplate neurons in early postnatal mouse somatosensory cortex. Elife. 2021 Jul 12;10:e60810.
  • Tahara N, Kawakami H, Chen K, Anderson A, Peterson MY, Gong W, Shah P, Hayashi S, Nishinakamura R, Nakagawa Y, Garry DJ, Kawakami Y. Sall4 regulates neuromesodermal progenitors and their descendants during body elongation in mouse embryos. Development. 2019 Jul 15;146(14).
  • Nakagawa Y. Development of the thalamus: From early patterning to regulation of cortical functions. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Dev Biol. 2019 Apr 29:e345.
  • Larsen R, Proue A, Scott EP, Christiansen M, Nakagawa Y. The thalamus regulates retinoic acid signaling and development of parvalbumin interneurons in postnatal mouse prefrontal cortex. eNeuro. 2019 Mar 11;6(1). pii: ENEURO.0018-19.2019.
  • Wong SZH, Scott EP, Mu W, Guo X, Borgenheimer E, Freeman M, Ming GL, Wu QF, Song H, Nakagawa Y. In vivo clonal analysis reveals spatiotemporal regulation of thalamic nucleogenesis. PLoS Biol. 2018 Apr 23;16(4):e2005211.
  • De Clercq S, Keruzore M, Desmaris E, Pollart C, Assimacopoulos S, Preillon J, Ascenzo S, Matson CK, Lee M, Nan X, Li M, Nakagawa Y, Hochepied T, Zarkower D, Grove EA, Bellefroid EJ. DMRT5 together with DMRT3 directly controls hippocampus development and neocortical area map formation. Cereb Cortex. 2018;28(2):493-509.
  • Zechel S, Nakagawa Y, Ibáñez CF. Thalamo-cortical axons regulate the radial dispersion of neocortical GABAergic interneurons. Elife. 2016 Dec 9;5. pii: e20770.
  • Sokolowski K, Tran T, Esumi S, Kamal Y, Oboti L, Lischinsky J, Goodrich M, Lam A, Carter M, Nakagawa Y, Corbin JG. Molecular and behavioral profiling of Dbx1-derived neurons in the arcuate, lateral and ventromedial hypothalamic nuclei. Neural Dev. 2016 May 21;11(1):12.

Current Graduate Students:

Timothy Monko (Neuroscience, University of Minnesota)

Former Graduate Students:

Krista Bluske (Ph.D. 2012, Neuroscience, University of Minnesota)

Tou Yia Vue (Ph.D. 2010, Neuroscience, University of Minnesota)

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