Scientists detail neural circuit that lets eye detect directional motion

Now, in a paper in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, have finally detailed the cellular circuit responsible for motion detection in the eye’s retina.

This circuit, which enables us to track moving objects, serves as an example of other brain circuits, some of which perform thousands of computations every second. The findings could aid the design of bionic eyes that track motion and process visual information like our own eyes.

“This work reveals a very sophisticated neural computation, the first non-linear computation performed by the nervous system for which a circuit is close to being solved,” said Frank Werblin, professor of molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley. “It is a preliminary step in understanding how more sophisticated computations are performed by the brain.”

Excerpt from Nachste Meldung, 28.11.2002