Activity-dependent refinement of neural circuits is a fundamental principle of neural development. This process has been well studied at retinogeniculate synapses—synapses that form between retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) ...

It has long been thought that the mammalian visual system is organized into parallel pathways, with incoming visual signals being parsed in the retina based on feature (e.g. color, contrast and motion) and then transmitted ...

DNA methylation plays important roles in the regulation of nervous system development and in cellular responses to environmental stimuli such as light-derived signals. Despite great efforts in understanding the maturation ...

Information about features in the visual world is parsed by circuits in the retina and is then transmitted to the brain by distinct subtypes of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). Axons from RGC subtypes are stratified in ...

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory demyelinating disease classically associated with axonal damage and loss; more recently, however, synaptic changes have been recognized as additional contributing ...

PURPOSE. Optic nerve hypoplasia (ONH) is the most common cause of childhood congenital blindness in developed nations, yet the fundamental pathobiology of ONH remains unknown. The objective of this study was to employ a ...

Background: Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), the output neurons of the retina, project to over 20 distinct brain nuclei, including the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), a thalamic region comprised of three functionally ...

Synaptic neurotransmission is known to be an energy demanding process. At the presynapse, ATP is required for loading neurotransmitters into synaptic vesicles, for priming synaptic vesicles before release, and as a substrate ...

Inhibitory interneurons comprise a fraction of the total neurons in the visual thalamus but are essential for sharpening receptive field properties and improving contrast-gain of retinogeniculate transmission. During early ...

Unconventional collagens are nonfribrillar proteins that not only contribute to the structure of extracellular matrices but exhibit unique bio-activities. Although roles for unconventional collagens have been well-established ...