Details of the Researcher

PHOTO

Yuan Li
Section
Graduate School of Medicine
Job title
Assistant Professor
Degree

Research History 4

  • 2025/12 - Present
    東北大学　大学院医学系研究科 認知生理学分野　助教

  • 2024/08 - 2025/11
    東京大学　神経生化学　JSPS 外国人特別研究員

  • 2019/08 - 2024/07
    カリフォルニア大学サンディエゴ校　神経生物学部門　博士研究員

  • 2015/01 - 2019/09
    南洋理工大学　生物学部　博士課程

Education 1

  • 南洋理工大学　生物学部　博士課程

    2015/01 - 2019/09

Papers 5

  1. Working memory retention by medial entorhinal cortex low-dimensional neural dynamics

    Li Yuan, Jiarui Wang, Xiaohe Li, Wenxi Li, Johnatan Aljadeff, Jill K Leutgeb, Stefan Leutgeb

    2026/08/23

    DOI： 10.64898/2026.08.18.745500 　

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    <jats:p>The ability to retain information over tens of seconds is essential for carrying out many routine tasks. Recurrently connected circuits are thought to support memory over these timescales, yet how they maintain and represent remembered information remains unclear. We asked whether the medial entorhinal cortex (mEC), where recurrent attractor dynamics generate grid-cell firing patterns and single toroidal attractor manifolds in two-dimensional environments, also supports low-dimensional neural activity patterns during memory retention. During a working-memory task, delay-period mEC dynamics did not show key features of grid firing in simple environments. Instead, broader mEC populations, not limited to grid cells, expressed multiple sequences and recurring activity patterns. Periodically repeating delay-period sequences retained task-relevant information, including past locations and future turn directions. These findings suggest that the mEC network generates low-dimensional dynamics more broadly, with grid-cell activity representing one manifestation and more complex manifold topologies supporting task-related representations during working memory.</jats:p>

  2. Time cell sequences during delay intervals are not dependent on brain state and do not support hippocampus-dependent working memory

    Jose F. Figueroa, Ameen Khan, Gautam Narayan, Jill K. Leutgeb, Stefan Leutgeb

    Nature Communications　2025/08/12

    DOI： 10.1038/s41467-025-62498-z 　

    ISSN： 2041-1723

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    <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Working memory (WM) is essential for performing cognitive tasks, and sequentially active hippocampal cells over many seconds (‘time cells’) have been observed during WM retention. Time cells predominantly occur when neural activity oscillates at theta frequency. To examine whether time cells during WM maintenance depend on ongoing theta oscillations, we controlled the persistence of theta during 10 s and 30 s delay intervals by either having rats run or rest, which resulted in conditions with and without persistent theta oscillations. In either condition, reliable time cells were limited to only the first few seconds of the delay interval while a second population of constitutively active cells emerged during the remainder of the delay period, neither of which were memory-related. Our results show that hippocampal sequential activity patterns are short-lasting and uninformative for WM, and that WM retention over more than ~5 s needs to include mechanisms other than hippocampal time cells.</jats:p>

  3. Low rate hippocampal delay period activity encodes behavioral experience

    Markos Athanasiadis, Stefano Masserini, Li Yuan, Dustin Fetterhoff, Jill K. Leutgeb, Stefan Leutgeb, Christian Leibold

    Hippocampus　2024/08

    DOI： 10.1002/hipo.23619 　

    ISSN： 1050-9631 1098-1063

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    <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Remembering what just happened is a crucial prerequisite to form long‐term memories but also for establishing and maintaining working memory. So far there is no general agreement about cortical mechanisms that support short‐term memory. Using a classifier‐based decoding approach, we report that hippocampal activity during few sparsely distributed brief time intervals contains information about the previous sensory motor experience of rodents. These intervals are characterized by only a small increase of firing rate of only a few neurons. These low‐rate predictive patterns are present in both working memory and non‐working memory tasks, in two rodent species, rats and Mongolian gerbils, are strongly reduced for rats with medial entorhinal cortex lesions, and depend on the familiarity of the sensory‐motor context.</jats:p>

  4. A neurogenic microenvironment defined by excitatory-inhibitory neuronal circuits in adult dentate gyrus

    Masato Uemura, Stefan Blankvoor, Sean Shui Liang Tok, Li Yuan, Luis Fernando Cobar, Kwok Keung Li, Ayumu Tashiro

    Cell Reports　36　(1)　109324-109324　2021/07

    Publisher: Elsevier {BV}

    DOI： 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109324 　

    ISSN： 2211-1247

  5. Place cells and long-term potentiation in the hippocampus

    Luis Fernando Cobar, Li Yuan, Ayumu Tashiro

    Neurobiology of Learning and Memory　138　206-214　2017/02

    Publisher: Elsevier {BV}

    DOI： 10.1016/j.nlm.2016.10.010 　

    ISSN： 1074-7427