Retinal ganglion cells provide the output of the retina; all our visual information is encoded in their spike trains. We try and elucidate the nature of this coding in several ways. One is to extract information rates from cell responses to natural scenes. Another is to analyze how spatial position may be encoded in the spike trains emanating from individual neurons. A third major interest are the temporal and spatial properties of adaptation mechanisms in the retina.
With in vitro recording (in collaboration with Dennis Dacey at the University of Washington), one can analyze not only ganglion cell properties but those of more proximal retinal neurons. This helps us understand in greater depth how ganglion cells formulate the signals they send to the brain.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (T. Dobzhansky). Primates are the only mammals with full trichromatic color vision, but the inheritance of the visual pigments has been arranged differently in the Old- and New-World primates. By studying and comparing anatomy and physiology in different species we hope to find clues as to the evolution of color vision and the retinal pathways.
