Arjun Krishnaswamy

Our goal is to understand how neurons form the complex circuits that underlie our mental abilities. We study this problem in the retina, a thin sheet of neural tissue located at the back of the eye which contains several neural circuits arranged in parallel. Each circuit begins with a photoreceptor, which is a photon detector, each ends with a particular retinal ganglion cell (RGC), which are feature detectors. There are ~30 types of RGCs and each is specialized to detect a unique feature in the visual scene such as edges, motion, color and so on. RGCs are thought to be endowed with their feature preferences because of synapses they receive from a very specific subset of interneuron types (~100 types). We want to learn how particular interneurons and RGCs choose to synapse selectively with each other during circuit assembly. We want to understand the factors that direct these synaptic choices and, ultimately, we want to understand the consequences of these early wiring events for mature circuit function. What we learn from these studies will help us draw links between circuitry, wiring genes and function and inform future studies at the subsequent levels of the visual pathway and higher circuits in the brain. See our website for more information about projects, people and news.