Not so different after all: Mysterious eye cells adap...( e adaptive to lighting conditions sai...),Health

e adaptive to lighting conditions," said Kwoon Wong, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Berson lab and the lead author of the Neuron paper. "Now we know that they are. Compared with rods and cones, they're glacially slow and they don't adjust their sensitivity as completely. But they do behave in similar ways. It's a difference of degree, not of kind. In fact, what we found out about ipRGCs seems to be true of all biological systems: They adapt to their environment."

To arrive at the findings, Wong, Berson and former Brown undergraduate Felice Dunn exposed rat ipRGCs to a series of increasingly bright flashes then measured changes in voltage across the cell membrane a sign of neuronal response. The flashes evoked much bigger responses when the cells had been sitting in darkness than when they were exposed to bright background light. These adjustments persisted when ipRGC synapses were chemically blocked, indicating that the changes in sensitivity were indeed happening within these cells.

'"/>

Contact: Wendy Lawton
Wendy_Lawton@brown.edu
401-863-1862
Brown University
4-Jan-2006

Page: 1 2
Related medicine news :

1. Pediatricians and pathologists see traumatic brain injury differently
2. Eye diseases gave great painters different vision of their work, Stanford ophthalmologist says
3. Emergency departments test chest pain patients differently, based on race, gender and insurance
4. Study indicates different treatment may be needed for infection-related breathing problems
5. Internal body clock dictates timing of different types of stroke
6. Puerto Rican and African-American children show different patterns of asthma care
7. Estrogen plays different role during stress in black and white teens
8. Define diabetes differently, says U-M expert in speech for national award
9. Men and women may need different heart transplant assessment criteria
10. Smoking, diabetes predict different forms of peripheral artery disease
11. Different forms of amyloid beta in Alzheimers disease harm neurons in different ways