| At the end of 2002, Science announced ten breakthroughs of the year. Among them was the discovery of a photo-sensing (melanopsin-containing) retinal ganglion cell (RGC) and its role in entraining the circadian clock. This breakthrough exemplifies the ultimate goal of neuroscience: to understand the nervous system from molecules to behavior. Light-sensing RGCs constitute one of a dozen discrete neuronal populations coding various aspects of the visual scene, in terms of their unique morphology, physiology and coverage of the retina. Interestingly, the function of the RGCs in entraining the circadian clock involves little retinal processing. My lab is focusing on the retinal structure and function, attempting to illustrate the neuronal circuitry underlying retinal processing and eventually the formation of these circuitries during development. Our final aim is to uncover the mechanisms regulating specific connections of different circuitries, the bases for coding visual information, and further more to elucidate the functions of the retinal output.
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