Exploring the first steps of vision

Vision originates in the retina where incident photons are translated into neuronal signals encoding information about the elementary visual features like intensity, contrast, color and motion. The analysis of the neuronal interactions underlying this transformation forms the core of our research activities, which are at present focused on two major topics: ·  Functional and molecular analysis of electrical synapses in the retina ·  Circuitry and functional role of retinal interneurons: horizontal cells and amacrine cells The complexity of the retinal network and its processing mechanisms can only be elucidated via a multi-method approach, and we therefore make use of a variety of techniques covering the fields of neuroanatomy, biochemistry and molecular biology, as well as electrophysiology and behavioral biology using transgenic models.