Dr. Béla Völgyi
Over 85% of the information perceived by our nervous system is processed by the retina, thus it is essential to understand how the retinal neuronal hyper-network works. Electrical synapses have been known for some 40 years, however their crucial role in visual information processing has only become obvious in recent years. Our team performs experiments to show that electrically coupled retinal neuronal networks play important roles in higher visual functions. We examine the expressional changes of the gap junction forming connexin proteins during the postnatal development and/or induced by changes in the environment. Our work particularly focuses on those inner retinal gap junctions that are formed by ganglion and amacrine cells (ganglion-ganglion, amacrine-amacrine and amacrine-ganglion).