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Madhura teamed up with Shuai from the Gjorgjeva group to show that luminance gain control past photoreceptors is multi-faceted. Madhura and Shuai combined imaging and behavioral experiment with computational modeling to show that a single luminance-sensitive visual pathways (via L3 neurons) implements gain control at both fast and slow time scales. This computation is bidirectional in that it prevents underestimation of contrast in low luminance and overestimation of contrast in high luminance. It's remarkable how a single neuronal pathway can perform diverse computation to ensure stable processing of visual stimuli.

We are thrilled about having received funding by the ERC Consolidator Grant 2022 for our project “Adaptive functions of visual systems”, and already popped the Champagne bottles.

This will allow us to investigate common challenges that visual systems face in dynamically changing environments, and to also work out how diverse visual system are adapted to the animal’s specific environmental and behavioral constraints. Contact us if you’re as excited about this question as we are and are interested in being part of this.
Read more here

The last "Göttingen defence" is one to memorize: Burak Gür defended his PhD thesis "Molecular and circuit analysis of stable contrast processing in the visual system" with a well-deserved summa cum laude

Our work on stable contrast processing is now out in eLife! Our work shows that a luminance gain leads to stable behavior in the ON pathway. This luminance gain is mediated by distinct first-order luminance-sensitive lamina interneurons L1 and L3 of the fly visual system. Contrary to our previous understanding, all lamina neurons give input to both ON and OFF pathways, redefining the input architecture to the fly visual system. The three lamina neurons L1, L2 and L3 distribute distinct contrast and luminance information to enable downstream computations such as motion vision

We proudly present Dr. Sebastian Molina-Obando. Sebastian successfully defended his PhD on "Mechanisms of robust feature extraction in early visual processing” and the whole lab (successfully?) got to practice their dancing skills.

We are very excited to see our recent work on global motion processing in Drosophila  published in Science Advances. The population of local motion detectors, T4/T5, encodes six different optic flow patterns generated by self-motion. This work brings together  puzzle pieces about how local motion is encoded from a hexagonally arranged fly eye, and how global motion can be computed from many local motion detectors.

Time to pop the champagne!
Congratulations to Freya for obtaining a TransMed fellowship right at the start of her PhD!
And congratulations to Miriam who won the Bernstein SmartSteps Award for her work on global motion processing.
You can read more about it here, and if you haven't, you should definitely watch Miriam's talk here.

Check out our new preprint "First-order visual interneurons distribute distinct contrast and luminance information across ON and OFF pathways to achieve stable behavior". This collaborative work by Madhura, Burak and Sebastian explores luminance invariance in the Drosophila ON pathway and redefines the input architecture to fly visual circuitry: The first order interneurons L1, L2 and L3 are not pathway specific but all distribute distinct types of information to both ON and OFF pathways.

Madhura defended her PhD thesis “Strategies for dynamic vision in the Drosophila peripheral visual system”. Congratulations to an excellent thesis, and a well-deserved summa cum laude degree!

Check out our paper "The physiological basis for contrast opponency in motion detection in Drosophila", now published in Nature Communications.
Using computational modelling and in vivo two photon calcium imaging, Luis' revealed the biological substrate for motion computation. This work shows how a key neuronal computation is implemented by its constituent neuronal circuit elements to ensure direction selectivity. Congratulations, Luis!