Abstract

One of the fundamental challenges in Neuroscience is to understand the underlying mechanisms that ensure specificity of connections between neurons. Visual information is processed already in the retina and split into different information channels before it is transmitted to higher visual centres in the brain. Such channels are represented through neurons belonging to individual circuits and serve therefore as excellent models to study specificity. We have recently identified the molecular and cellular components crucial for the detection of oriented or elongated visual stimuli. Our results show that specific synaptic adhesion molecules are responsible to set up the retinal connectivity within this circuit. Furthermore, the structure and overall arborisation shape of retinal inhibitory neurons involved is directly linked to their functionality, thereby creating orientation selectivity. The talk will give an overview of our findings relating structure to function and present the vertebrate visual system as a model for cell type-specific connectivity.