Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory
Richard H. Masland, Ph.D.

Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory | Recent Publications | Links

Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory Ofice Wellman 429 Telephone: 617-726-3888 Email: masland@helix.mgh.harvard.edu Predocs: 1 Postdocs: 5 Completed PhD's: 3 Masland Publications

Dr. Masland is the Charles A. Pappas Professor of Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and Neurophysiologist in Neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. He received his A.B. degree from Harvard College and his Ph.D. degree from McGill University. His postdoctoral work was done at Stanford and Harvard Medical Schools. Among his awards is Harvard University’s Hoopes Prize, for excellence in teaching.

Research in this laboratory concerns local cellular interactions within the retina. Mammalian retinas contain a surprising diversity of cell types. Amacrine cells, upon which we have especially concentrated, exist in atleast 20 different morphological subclasses. By fluorescent staining many of these classes can be visualized by distinct, reproducible populations in histological material or intact retinas in vitro during electrophysiological recording. The broad questions under investigation are: (1) why this diversity exists, i.e., what functions the many cells carry out; (2) how orderly structural relations among the cells are created and maintained; and (3) how inner retinal cell's local dendritic networks function.

At present, we have two main lines of work. The first is a systematic, quantitative study of the mosaics and arrays of retinal neurons. The goal is to account for all of players in the retina's microcircuitry. Toward this end, we have invented a new method for revealing the shapes of dendrites, which uses a photochemical reaction initiated by irradiation of a single cell's nucleus with a microbeam of light. The method is in effect a quantitative Golgi, in the sense that almost every cell targeted is successfully filled. We have used it to characterize the population of amacrine cells and are now extending it to other retinal neurons.

A second focus is the mechanism of direction selectivity by retinal ganglion cells. We have identified the probable bipolar cell that drives the directionally selective ganglion cell. We are now searching among the populations of amacrine cells for the detailed microcircuitry that computes the directional discrimination.

Links

• Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• HHMI Neuroscience Biomedical Research
• Harvard Medical School
• HMS Ph.D. Programs in the Division of Medical Sciences
• HMS Masland Laboratory

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