Volgyi Group

Retinal electrical synapses group, University of Pécs, HU: Prof. Dr. Béla Völgyi, Dr. Tamás Kovács-Öller, Gergely Szarka

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) and participate in the synchronization of ganglion cell action potentials. We study how such ganglion cell population activity encodes certain visual patterns or visual cues. We also study how the function of electrical and chemical synapses affect each other and if they interfere and/or cooperate to serve signaling. Results of our research will contribute to algorithms for the stimulation of retinal prostheses and/or to provide data to design high performance bionic eyes for robotics.