Oxyopia Abstract

September 11, 2009
Thursday, 4:00 PM
489 Minor Hall

Andrew Huberman, PhD
Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California
Host: Marla Feller

Title

Genetic dissection of visual circuits

Abstract

What are the neural circuits underlying vision? Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) are the output neurons of the eye and thereby the source of all visual information for the brain. Over a century of study has established there are ~20 different RGC subtypes, each encoding a qualitatively distinct aspect of the visual scene such as luminance, color, dark edges, etc. Where each RGC subtype sends that information in the brain and how the outputs of different RGC subtypes are integrated with each other to influence visual processing, remains unclear. I applied genetic techniques to identify and visualize individual RGC subtypes in the mouse. This revealed a remarkable degree of wiring specificity for RGC subtypes encoding distinct aspects of motion, direction and luminance. These findings support the idea of multiple visual "sub-systems", each pooling inputs from different combinations of RGC subtypes and thereby mediating specific aspects of visual perception and behavior. Genetic analyses are beginning to reveal the logic of how functionally distinct visual circuits are specified and assembled during development.

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