A Breakthrough on How the Eye Senses Motion
Sept 9, 2011 - Dr. Gautam
Awatramani studies the neurons that form the "electrical wiring" of the eye and connect it to the rest of the brain. Recently he and his FFB-funded team at Dalhousie University made an unprecedented discovery.
"For nearly 50 years scientists have been trying to figure out how motion is computed by the retina," says Dr. Awatramani. His team's new work reveals how a group of nerve cells, called directional-selective ganglion cells (DSGCs), sense motion.
Directional-selective ganglion cells sense four different directions: forward, backward, upward and downward. Under a microscope, they observed that the cells that sense forward motion have their branches, called dendrites, all pointing in the same direction.
"[These] cells in the eye act like little traffic cops, says PhD student Stuart Trenholm, a trainee in the Awatramani lab."Each points in the direction of objects in motion; directional selective ganglion cells allow our brains to make sense of the moving world around us."
Discoveries like these are essential to understanding how we see - and ultimately to restoring sight to people who have lost their vision to retinal degenerative disease. Dr. Awatramani and his team hope to eventually be able to reprogram this electrical network giving people who have lost their sight a renewed ability to sense light and motion.
This research was published in the medical journal, Neuron, on August 25, 2011.
Stuart Trenholm will be speaking about the research efforts of the Awatramani team at the Halifax Vision Quest conference. Register today!