Publications related to Visual phototransduction

Probing and modulating inter-areal coupling in the cortical visual motion processing pathway with non-invasive brain stimulation

In the last few years, stroke ranked as the second most common cause of death and is the third most significant condition affecting disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) worldwide. Being the most prevalent and quality of life impacting post-stroke symptom ...

EPFL2024

Ultraviolet Superradiance from Mega-Networks of Tryptophan in Biological Architectures

Majed Chergui, Katrin Elisabeth Oberhofer

Networks of tryptophan (Trp)& horbar;an aromatic amino acid with strong fluorescence response & horbar;are ubiquitous in biological systems, forming diverse architectures in transmembrane proteins, cytoskeletal filaments, subneuronal elements, photorecepto ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Neuronal migration prevents spatial competition in retinal morphogenesis

Martin Weigert

The concomitant occurrence of tissue growth and organization is a hallmark of organismal development(1-3). This often means that proliferating and differentiating cells are found at the same time in a continuously changing tissue environment. How cells ada ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

In Vivo Retinal Pigment Epithelium Imaging using Transscleral Optical Imaging in Healthy Eyes

Christophe Moser, Timothé Laforest, Laura Emmanuelle Kowalczuk, Mathieu Künzi

Objective: To image healthy retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells in vivo using Transscleral OPtical Imaging (TOPI) and to analyze statistics of RPE cell features as a function of age, axial length (AL), and eccentricity. Design: Single-center, explorator ...

ELSEVIER2022

Features integrate along a motion trajectory when object integrity is preserved

Michael Herzog, Leila Drissi Daoudi - Kleinbauer

Information about a moving object is usually poor at each retinotopic location because photoreceptor activation is short, noisy, and affected by shadows, reflections of other objects, and so on. Integration across the motion trajectory may yield a much bet ...

2021

Homogeneous light stimulation of melanopsin and cones with a Maxwellian view device for the human eye

Gilles Evéquoz, Patrick Robert Flückiger

We designed and tested a device to stimulate specifically one photoreceptor type, or a combination of some of them, of the human eye by using up to six primaries. The device produces a homogeneous light field over 40 degrees which is projected onto the ret ...

IEEE2021

Photovoltaic stimulation of retinal microcircuit for vision restoration

Naïg Aurelia Ludmilla Chenais

Sight restoration through retinal prostheses was still a mere dream a century ago. Current challenges are even greater: providing a quantitatively and qualitatively useful artificial vision to late blind patients. Existing approaches all face engineering a ...

EPFL2021

Development of a new visual prosthesis for preclinical studies on artificial vision

Marta Jole Ildelfonsa Airaghi Leccardi

The technological evolution in materials science and microengineering favored the production of advanced visual prostheses useful for fighting blindness and to improve patients quality of life. Visual prostheses aim at replacing lost visual functions by ar ...

EPFL2020

The Photoisomerization Pathway(s) of Push‐Pull Phenylazoheteroarenes

Anne-Clémence Corminboeuf, Sergio Vela Llausi

Azoheteroarenes are the most recent derivatives targeted to further improve the properties of azo‐based photoswitches. Their light‐induced mechanism for trans‐cis isomerization is assumed to be very similar to that of the parent azobenzene. As such, they i ...

2020

In vivo evaluation of gene editing and prosthetic strategies to restore vision in small and large animal models of retinal degeneration

Paola Vagni

Inherited retinal diseases (IRDs) form a group of diverse disorders that lead to the degeneration of the light-sensing cells of the retina: the photoreceptors. IRDs are among the leading causes of blindness in working-age adults living in industrialized co ...

EPFL2020

Discrete windows of feature integration

Michael Herzog, Adrien Christophe Doerig, Leila Drissi Daoudi - Kleinbauer

A car drives through the night. It is hard to estimate its color from single photoreceptor activity because photoreceptor activation is short and noisy. An efficient way to estimate the color is to average photoreceptor activities along the car’s motion tr ...

SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD2019

Perspectives: Hemianopia—Toward Novel Treatment Options Based on Oscillatory Activity?

Friedhelm Christoph Hummel, Estelle Emeline Raffin, Roberto Felipe Salamanca Giron

Stroke has become one of the main causes of visual impairment, with more than 15 million incidences of first-time strokes, per year, worldwide. One-third of stroke survivors exhibit visual impairment, and most of them will not fully recover. Some recovery ...

2019

Multilevel regulation of the glass locus during Drosophila eye development

Bart Deplancke, Michael Vincent Frochaux, Abhishek Kumar Mishra

Development of eye tissue is initiated by a conserved set of transcription factors termed retinal determination network (RDN). In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the zinc-finger transcription factor Glass acts directly downstream of the RDN to contr ...

2019

Gene Editing Preserves Visual Functions in a Mouse Model of Retinal Degeneration

Diego Ghezzi, Naïg Aurelia Ludmilla Chenais, Paola Vagni, Tommaso Marchetti

Inherited retinal dystrophies (IRDs) are a large and heterogeneous group of degenerative diseases caused by mutations in various genes. Given the favorable anatomical and immunological characteristics of the eye, gene therapy holds great potential for thei ...

2019

How Rhodopsin Tunes the Equilibrium between Protonated and Deprotonated Forms of the Retinal Chromophore

Ursula Röthlisberger, Siri Camee van Keulen, Alicia Solano

Rhodopsin is a photoactive G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) that converts dim light into a signal for the brain, leading to eyesight. Full activation of this GPCR is achieved after passing through several steps of the protein's photoactivation pathway. Ke ...

2017

Mechanism of ultrafast non-reactive deactivation of the retinal chromophore in non-polar solvents

Goran Zgrablic

The photoisomerization of the all-trans protonated Schiff base of retinal (SBR+) in solution is highly inefficient. The present theoretical and experimental investigation aims at disclosing the mechanisms of ultrafast, non-reactive relaxation of SBR+ that ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2017

Computational Investigation of Intracellular Signalling Cascades : from G-Protein-Coupled Receptors to Adenylyl Cyclase

Siri Camee van Keulen

In order to adjust to changes in the environment, cells can communicate via signalling cascades. A common pathway for intercellular communication is the G-protein-coupled- receptor (GPCR) signal transduction cascade which is triggered by a (chemical or phy ...

EPFL2017

Dual optical control and mechanistic insights into photoswitchable group II and III metabotropic glutamate receptors

Johannes Broichhagen

G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling occurs in complex spatiotemporal patterns that are difficult to probe using standard pharmacological and genetic approaches. A powerful approach for dissecting GPCRs is to use light-controlled pharmacological age ...

National Academy of Sciences2017

Spatial and temporal aspects of visual backward masking in children and young adolescents

Michael Herzog

The development of visual functions is very diverse. Some visual functions mature within the first year of life, whereas maturation for other functions extends into adolescence. The reasons for these developmental differences are largely unknown. Here, we ...

Springer2016

Unified framework to evaluate non-visual spectral effectiveness of light for human health

Marilyne Andersen, María Lovísa Ámundadóttir, Steven W. Lockley

The discovery of a novel non-rod, non-cone photoreceptor in the mammalian eye that mediates a range of ‘non-visual’ responses to light has required reexamination of how lighting needs for human health are characterized and evaluated. Existing literature pr ...

SAGE Publications2017