Jianhua Cang
University of Virginia, VA·Neuroscience
Seeing is more than recording light. The brain must detect motion, separate the moving world from one's own movement, and merge the slightly different views from the two eyes into a sense of depth.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biology
- Topics
visual processing
superior colliculus
Cbln4
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Apr 2030
What they work on
- Confirm that Cbln4-positive neurons in the mouse superficial superior colliculus are inhibitory and direction selective, map their shape and connections, and manipulate them to test whether they adjust motion responses based on surrounding context.
- Compare how excitatory and inhibitory direction-selective neurons and thalamus-projecting wide-field vertical neurons respond in closed-loop versus open-loop virtual reality, using in vivo two-photon calcium imaging in mice.
- Identify superior colliculus neurons that signal the mouse's own locomotion, reveal their molecular identity, and record whether they are organized by depth and location in comparing predicted and actual visual motion.
- Map how binocular disparity tuning relates to orientation maps and cortical layers in tree shrew primary visual cortex, using two-photon calcium imaging and imaging-guided multi-channel electrophysiology with random-dot stereograms.
- Test whether inhibitory neuron subtypes in tree shrew and mouse V1 are sharply tuned to disparity, identifying them with fluorescent in situ hybridization or transgenic lines, and use dendritic imaging to map their synaptic connections for a network model.
More about the research
These projects study how specific types of neurons and their connections carry out this visual processing. One project focuses on the superior colliculus of mice, a midbrain region that links vision to movement. The other focuses on stereoscopic depth perception in the visual cortex of tree shrews and mice. Both rely on two-photon calcium imaging, a microscopy method that records activity in many individual neurons in living animals, along with methods that target specific cell types.
Why it matters
Normal visual processing is disrupted in dyslexia, schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders, and depth perception is impaired in amblyopia and strabismus. Identifying which neuron types and connections carry out motion and depth processing could inform the understanding and future treatment of these disorders. It could also show how miswired connections during development affect vision.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sung Soo Kim
University of California-Santa Barbara, CA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Identify which visual features two types of ER neurons extract in the fruit fly anterior visual pathway, using two-photon calcium imaging of tethered flies viewing stimuli in a 360-degree full-color virtual-reality arena.
Huizhong Whit Tao
University of Southern California, CA·Neuroscience
Map how cortical pathology and molecular, cellular and gene-expression changes in the anterior cingulate cortex develop alongside apathy-like behavioral impairments in two mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, using spatial transcriptomics with anatomy and pathology.
Gregory Deangelis
University of Rochester, NY·Neuroscience
Test a theory predicting that people's perception of object motion and depth during pursuit eye movements is biased by viewing geometry, using human psychophysics while keeping the object's motion on the retina fixed.
The school
University of Virginia: 43 labs on PI Pages, $814M a year on research, 413 research doctorates a year.
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