Two out of three. We rocked the Breaking News Session (NWG meeting)

Madhura and Sebastian have both podiumed at the Breaking News‘ Best Paper Award in 2019 at the Göttingen Meeting of the German Neuroscience Society (NWG).

Photo of NWG award 2019 — Private photo showing Madhura Ketkar (left), Marion Silies (centre), Sebastian M. Molina Obando (right)

Sebastian Mauricio Molina Obando
has received a second place for his short talk "A combination of GABA- and glutamate-gated chloride channels mediates ON selectivity in the Drosophila visual system".

Madhura Ketkar
was awarded a third place for her presentation "A luminance-sensitive cell type in Drosophila facilitates visual contrast computation".

LAB NEWS

Burak’s paper is now published in Nature Communications

We revealed the algorithms and mechanisms of rapid luminance gain control in Drosophila, which is a critical computation that results in stable visual processing in highly dynamic light conditions. We identify the full circuitry that achieves stable visual processing, and use a combination of experiments and theory to show that narrow spatial pooling luminance signal achieves luminance gain and is tuned to the statistics of natural visual scenes.

While we studied the implementation of rapid luminance gain control in the fly, all visually guided animals and machines are confronted with the same (rapid luminance change) challenges, arguing that similar mechanisms will also aid (or could aid) stable vision across systems.

Read the full article published in Nature Communications here