Mitsuko Watabe-Uchida

Mitsuko Watabe-Uchida is a Research Fellow at the Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, with expertise in behavioral neuroscience, awake electrophysiology, anatomy, and molecular biology. She graduated from Kyoto University in 1992 with a PhD in the Masatoshi Takeichi Lab (1998), then worked as a staff scientist at Tokyo Metropolitan Institute (Atsuko Sehara Lab), followed by postdoctoral roles at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Linda Van Aelst Lab) and Harvard University (Nao Uchida Lab) before establishing her independent position in 2013.

Her research focuses on the neural and computational mechanisms of threat-coping, novelty exploration, and dopamine neuron diversity. Key projects include studying how animals balance curiosity and fear, the role of posterior striatum dopamine neurons in threat avoidance, and developmental trajectories of reward/threat processing. Publications highlight her work on distributed dopamine signaling, threat-reward conflict resolution, and advanced neurochemical monitoring tools like GRAB sensors.

Current lab affiliations include the Naoshige Uchida Lab at Harvard's Biological Labs (BL4055). Collaborative work spans institutions including Kyoto University, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Her research intersects with computational models of learning, neuroanatomical circuit mapping, and behavioral paradigms in rodents.

Methodologically, she integrates multi-electrode recordings, optogenetics, CLARITY imaging, and machine learning-based behavioral analysis (e.g., DeepLabCut, MoSeq). Her 2022 Nature Neuroscience paper demonstrated a temporal shift in dopamine responses aligning with machine learning's temporal difference errors, while 2025 work revealed hypothalamic circuits governing social homeostasis.