Research Group

Visual information processing occupies a substantial part of our brain. It starts in the retina, which not only converts the incoming stream of photons into electrical signals, but also performs a first analysis of the observed scene. The retina extracts information such as contrast, brightness and „color”, as well as more complex stimulus features, including edges, motion and its direction. Even some initial clues about object segregation may be computed in the retina. In short, the retina is a sophisticated image processor.

The retina’s processing capabilities depend on about 70 types of neurons organized in various microcircuits. Our work is aimed at unraveling the function and organization of retinal microcircuits and a better understanding of the underlying computational rules. Furthermore, we are interested in the mechanisms that implement these microcircuits during development and how microcircuits change in retinal degeneration.     Read more ...

2012-12

Archana Jalligampala (student of Dr. Rathbun and Prof. Zrenner) received a poster award at the International Conference on Neuroprosthetic Devices

2012-11

Organizing a symposium at the Meeting of the German Neuroscience Society 2013 on "Local Synaptic Coding in the Retina"

2011-09

Tom Baden received the 2011 VNS Young Investigator Award at the ERM 2011, Amsterdam, for the best poster presentation