Funding

We acknowledge past and current support by the following institutions:

ERC Consolidator Grant
Adaptive functions of visual systems "AdaptiveVision"
(Grant Agreement No: 101045003)

ERC Starting Grant:
Microcircuitry of the Drosophila visual system "MicroCyFly"
(Grant Agreement No: 716512)

FOR5289: Research Unit "Robust Circuits"
https://robustcircuit.flygen.org/

CRC 1080: Molecular and cellular mechanisms of neural homeostasis
Project C06: Behavioral and circuit stability in dynamically changing environments
https://www.crc1080.com/

Emmy Noether-Programm (DFG):
The molecular and cellular basis of motion computation

CRC 889: Cellular Mechanisms of Sensory Processing:
Project C08: The role of glutamatergic inhibition in visual processing

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