Alexander Sher, Ph.D.

Research

Processing of visual information begins in the retina where the “rain of photons” is processed by more than twenty parallel neuronal pathways, each encoding a particular feature of the visual scene, e.g. spatial patterns, color, motion, its direction, etc. My research focuses on understanding how the visual information is encoded by these pathways and how the complex and precise retinal circuitry responsible for this processing is created during the development. In addition, we investigate how effects of some of the degenerative retinal diseases can be ameliorated or reversed. In our research we use multidisciplinary approach that combines state-of-the-art multi-electrode recordings of neural activity, genetics, and bio-photonics.