Sidney Kuo
,
Credentials
PhD

Assistant Professor
Biography

Research Summary

How do sensory circuits extract and represent behaviorally relevant signals from the environment? We investigate this question in the mammalian retina, the thin neural tissue that lines the back of the eye. We use the retina as a model system because its cell types and circuits are well-defined and we can maintain the sensitivity of the retinal circuitry to its natural input (patterns of light) inex-vivopreparations that allow good experimental access to the different elements of the circuit. We use a combination of patch-clamp electrophysiology and two-photon microscopy in transgenic mice to study how the properties of retinal cells and synapses give rise to the visual computations that underlie how we see. A current focus of the lab is to understand how MĂĽller cells, the primary glial cell type of the retina, shape the function of retinal synapses.