Research Projects

The brain's image stabilization is crucial in preventing the slippage of retinal images, a condition that can lead to diseases like oscillopsia. Understanding the mechanisms underlying image stabilization is essential, as it is crucial for detecting vibrations and motion in the brain. Image stabilization is achieved by specific brain circuits that trigger eye movements to compensate for head motion. These circuits mainly use inputs from the vestibular system for computing head motion. However, evidence suggests that inputs from other sensory systems, such as neurons in the medial terminal nuclei (MTN), also play a role in computing head movement. To address this challenge, a system will be designed to monitor the spike activity of neurons in the MTN while simultaneously monitoring head movements and compensatory eye movements in freely-behaving mice. The system will use pharmacological and genetic tools to evaluate whether perturbing visual inputs to MTN neurons affects the computation of head movement and induces oscillopsia-like symptoms. The experiments will provide insights on the role of visual circuits in tracking head movements and image stabilization, helping to create an accurate model of the circuit mechanisms underlying image stabilization. This knowledge may also provide insight into how compromising these circuits can engender diseases like oscillopsia and guide effective therapeutic strategies to combat disease pathologies. This proposal has broad scope in basic and clinical neurosciences, with a tangible impact on public health in India.