The National Eye Institute (NEI) awarded a $487,862 Project Grant under the Vision Research program (CFDA 93.867) to the University of Washington. The grant, titled "Dynamic Retinal Coding in Natural Environments," aims to understand how the retina copes with rapid and naturalistic changes in light intensity that occur in natural environments. The research will investigate adaptation mechanisms across photoreceptors, retinal ganglion cells, and intermediate circuitry to determine how the visual system provides reliable signaling to downstream brain areas under dynamic lighting conditions. Key objectives include examining the role of adaptation in phototransduction, probing the contribution of retinal ganglion cell spike generation, and determining the impact of adaptation in retinal interneurons, with a focus on the function of AII amacrine cells. This work is intended to advance the understanding of how the visual system encodes visual features in natural environments with fluctuating light intensity.
Generated 4/1/25, 3:18 AM