UNITBV researcher makes a breakthrough in Neuroscience

A new scientific article written by Tudor Badea, a researcher originating in Brașov, was published in the prestigious “The Journal of Neuroscience”. Dr. Tudor Badea, a researcher of Transilvania University of Brașov, together with three other colleagues who conduct their activity at Washington University School of Medicine, have opened, through their research, a new path for understanding the function of retinal ganglion cells and for understanding the mechanisms of visual perception in mammals and humans. The genetic strategy developed by the four researchers might succeed, in the future, in elucidating the function of these cells.

The visual representation of the world around is transmitted from the eye to the brain through several dozen distinct information channels, aided by specialized types of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). These RGCs take the information processed at the level of the retina and carry it to the specialized brain nuclei, in order to provide information necessary for various visual functions and reflexes.

The diversity of the RGC types is a highly topical field of study. In the article published this fall, the authors describe how the team led by Daniel Kerschensteiner, from Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, Missouri, and by Tudor C. Badea, from Transilvania University of Brașov, resorted to a unique genetic methodology to characterize a population of mouse retinal RGCs (contrast-suppressed RGCs, tSBC). These cells are unique among the classes of RGCs in that their activity is inhibited by any form of visual change in their receptive field. Unlike the conventional classes of RGCs, which activate when their receptive fields are exposed to visual stimuli, tSBC cells are constitutively active and cease their activity when any kind of change occurs in their visual field. It is not yet clear what this type of response serves to, but the genetic strategy developed by the researchers might succeed in elucidating the function of these cells in the future.
 

In this paper, the authors discovered the brain nuclei where these cells synapse, namely the superior colliculus  (“the primitive visual brain” ), and the lateral geniculate nucleus (the relay nucleus for the visual cortex), as well as the pretectal area, where the information related to the perception of movement is usually processed. The technique of labelling tSBC cells through the Cre-loxP combinatorial genetics allowed the unique identification of tSBC cells, the description of dendrites and axons, as well as the developmental stages of these cells.

More info: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/42/38/7213