Bart Borghuis

Biography

UofL Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology. I am a Dutch neuroscientist who spent most of his research career studying the mammalian visual system. I performed my PhD research at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and worked in visual neuroscience labs from Sydney, Australia, to Ashburn, VA and New Haven, CT, USA, before setting up my own laboratory at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Louisville, KY.

Research Interests

A ubiquitous feature of the brain is the division of sensory information into parallel signaling pathways. Parallel processing makes the brain more efficient, because each pathway can be optimized for encoding a specific class of information. While functional differences between parallel pathways are well established, many of the underlying cell-intrinsic and circuit mechanisms remain unclear. Research in the Borghuis laboratory concentrates on the synaptic and circuit mechanisms for parallel processing in the mouse visual system. Parallel processing starts at the first visual synapse in the retina, where a cone photoreceptor connects to each of approximately twelve bipolar cell types, each with distinct response properties at the level of their synaptic output. This functional diversity is critical for the formation of 20-40 distinct visual representations at the level of the retinal ganglion cells, which selectively encode contrast polarity, size, and color, the presence of edges, and visual motion. A central goal of the research is to elucidate how these emergent visual properties depend on synaptic mechanisms within retinal circuitry. By applying cutting-edge imaging methods, we generate new insight into the mechanisms for stimulus encoding and information processing including gain control and signal integration in parallel neural pathways at the synaptic and sub-cellular compartment level, as well as the input-output relationships of genetically targeted neuron types in intact, identified neural circuits.

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