Selection results and recipient summaries for the 2017 Zoological Society of Japan Award

The Board of Directors of the Zoological Society of Japan (Public Interest Incorporated Foundation) held a board meeting on Friday, June 2, and deliberated on the candidates for each award based on the recommendations of the Award Selection Committee. As a result, the recipients of the 2017 Zoological Society of Japan awards have been decided as follows. The award ceremony and the lectures by the winners of the Zoological Society Award and the Encouragement Award will be held on September 22 at the Toyama Prefectural Civic Center.

Public Interest Incorporated Foundation, Zoological Society of Japan
Chairman Yoshitaka Oka

Etsuro Ito, Professor, Faculty of Education and Integrated Arts and Sciences, Waseda University
Elucidation of the learning and memory mechanisms in molluscan gastropods

Reason for winning
Dr. Etsuro Ito has long studied the learning and memory mechanisms of molluscan gastropods. Following the tradition established since Kandel, Dr. Ito was the first to select the pond snail, Lymnaea, as a subject and has advanced highly unique research using its conditioned taste aversion behavior. A major recent achievement is the clarification that insulin-like substances play a decisive role in the formation of long-term memory in conditioned taste aversion. The smooth progress of this series of studies on the relationship between memory and insulin-like substances is underpinned by Dr. Ito's signature extensive and precise quantitative research, which began with the discovery of the neuron known as the Cerebral Giant Cell (CGC), for which he received the Zoological Society of Japan Award for Young Scientists in 1999. Dr. Ito tackled everything from device development to methods for quantitatively analyzing the CREB gene and its gene products in a single CGC neuron, successfully applying this to his own research and achieving accomplishments well deserving of the Zoological Society of Japan Award.

Abstract of the Academic Award Winner (Etsuro Ito)