Congratulations to Dr. Zachary Roper for receiving the 2017 NIH F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship Grant funded by the National Eye Institute!  Zachary has been working with Dr. Geoffrey Woodman and Dr. Jeff Schall on the cognitive neuroscience of vision.

Gordon Logan receives APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions by David Salisbury | Apr. 25, 2017, 10:43 AM The American Psychological Association has honored Centennial Professor of Psychology Gordon D. Logan with its most prestigious award for scientific achievement, the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. Logan is one of four psychologists who are receiving the award this year, which is given to individuals who have made distinguished theoretical or empirical contributions to basic research in psychology. According to Centennial Professor of Psychology Randolph Blake, Logan is highly deserving of this award. In his nominating letter, Blake stated that Logan is “one of the most productive, creative and influential cognitive scientists of his era” whose “empirical and theoretical work has spanned all of the major paradigms of modern cognitive psychology.” Logan has made profound theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of psychology through his studies of attention, skill acquisition, and executive control. Blake’s letter singles out specific examples of Logan’s impact, including the following. He pioneered the “stop-signal paradigm” that forces an individual to inhibit an ongoing action in response to a stop signal, which has allowed psychologists to learn how people arrest an ongoing behavior; the paradigm has […]

Fish eyes may hold key to regenerating human retinas by David Salisbury If you were a fish and your retina was damaged, it could repair itself and your vision would be restored in a few weeks. Vanderbilt biologists James Patton, left, Mahesh Rao and Dominic Didiano in the zebrafish facility. (The Patton Lab/Vanderbilt) Sadly, human eyes don’t have this beneficial ability. However, new research into retinal regeneration in zebrafish has identified a signal that appears to trigger the self-repair process. And, if confirmed by follow-up studies, the discovery raises the possibility that human retinas can also be induced to regenerate, naturally repairing damage caused by degenerative retinal diseases and injury, including age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. The research was performed by a team of biologists at Vanderbilt University and is described in a paper titled “Neurotransmitter-Regulated Regeneration in the Zebrafish Retina” published online Mar. 9 by the journal Stem Cell Reports. “The prevailing belief has been that the regeneration process in fish retinas is triggered by secreted growth factors, but our results indicate that the neurotransmitter GABA might initiate the process instead,” said James Patton, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt, who directed the study. “All the regeneration […]

Vanderbilt Eye Institute and Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science Present “Oxidative Stress and its Functional Consequences Measured In Vivo by MRI” Bruce Berkowitz, Ph.D. Professor and Director of Small Animal MRI Facility Wayne State University School of Medicine 12:00 PM, Wednesday, July 19, 2017 Elliott Conference Room at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute In 1992, it was not obvious that MRI, a relatively insensitive and still developing imaging method, would be useful for examining the retina, one of the thinnest organs in the body. Since then, Dr. Berkowitz has established a body of work that highlights MRI as a surprisingly useful discovery tool in vision research. These methods have been successful transitioned into cancer and brain research areas, and are used by drug companies and other investigators world-wide. Improvements in resolution and methodology have even allowed us to measure the physiology of sub-compartments within rod cells in vivo. These data are spatially grounded based on optical coherence tomography images and compared to visual performance using optokinetic tracking. His current pioneering efforts uses MRI to measure neuronal oxidative stress without a contrast agent in untreatable neurodegenerative disease to o\ptimize antioxidant treatment in vivo.

Symposium honors Casagrande’s career Colleagues of Vivien Casagrande, Ph.D., celebrated her distinguished career in the visual sciences with a “Lifetime of Vision” symposium Nov. 18 in Biological Sciences/Medical Research Building III. Casagrande, who joined the Vanderbilt University faculty in 1975, is professor of Cell & Developmental Biology, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Psychology and a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center investigator. Her studies, which have mapped the visual brain circuitry in a variety of species, have advanced understanding of the development and evolution of the mammalian visual system. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association of Anatomists, Casagrande has received a Chancellor’s Award for her research and an Outstanding Teacher award from the Vanderbilt Brain Institute. Original Source

The Alliance for Eye and Vision Research honors two from Vanderbilt Eye Institute (VEI) Two Vanderbilt Eye Institute physicians have been selected as Emerging Vision Scientists by the Alliance for Eye and Vision Research (AEVR). Anthony Daniels, M.D., assistant professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Cancer Biology and Radiation Oncology, and Dolly Ann Padovani-Claudio, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of Pediatric Ophthalmology and Adult Strabismus, were among 22 vision scientists recognized and invited to participate in a congressional briefing in September as well as represent the vision science community with visits to various congressional offices. Daniels’ research focuses on developing novel therapies for the treatment of retinoblastoma, the most common ocular cancer in children. His team uses an emerging therapeutic approach called intra-arterial chemotherapy, or IA chemo, to deliver chemotherapy directly to the tumor in the eye. This approach limits the adverse effects typically associated with systemic chemotherapy. His research aims to develop novel compounds that are more effective and less toxic than the traditional agents currently available. “Not only are we targeting the tumor to try to spare the rest of the child’s body from the toxic effects of chemotherapy, but we are also working on targeting the molecular machinery […]

Sohee Park and Geoff Woodman Receive Chancellors Research Award    Park and Woodman were honored for their two papers “Synchronizing theta oscillations with direct-current stimulation strengthens adaptive control in the human brain” and “Medial–Frontal Stimulation Enhances Learning in Schizophrenia by Restoring Prediction Error Signaling.” Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and in Journal of Neuroscience, these papers develop a novel treatment and intervention that can successfully restore high-level mental functions, which when malfunctioning, are believed to be the primary cause of schizophrenia.    “Against the background of scientific knowledge that shows neural activity within the brain arises when a mismatch occurs between what someone expects to happen and what actually occurs, Sohee and Geoffrey demonstrated that using trans-cranial direct-current stimulation, both of these signals can be boosted,” Zeppos said. “The result was an improvement in the ability to detect one’s own errors and learn from misperceptions.” Original Article

A Little Spark for Sharper Sight Test Stimulating the visual cortex of the brain for 20 minutes with a mild electrical current can improve vision for about two hours, and those with worse vision see the most improvement, according to a Vanderbilt University study published this week in Current Biology. “It’s actually a very simple idea,” said co-author Geoff Woodman, associate professor of psychology. “This kind of stimulation can improve cognitive processing in other brain areas, so if we stimulate the visual system, could we improve processing? Could we make someone’s vision better—not at the level of the eye, like Lasik or glasses, but directly at the level of the brain?” Twenty young, healthy subjects with normal or near-normal vision were asked to evaluate the relative position of two identical vertical lines and judged whether they were perfectly aligned or offset. The test is more sensitive than a standard eye chart, and gave the researchers are very precise measurement of each subjects’ visual acuity. The researchers then passed a very mild electric current through the area at the back of the brain that processes visual information. After 20 minutes, the subjects were asked to perform the test again, and about […]

(photo by John Russell) Tonia Rex, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute are working to uncover how best to treat ocular trauma, the fourth leading cause of blindness worldwide. It is a growing concern for the Department of Defense, which recently approved Rex for a $1.5 million grant to further study the impact that pressurized airwave blasts have on the eye. The three-year grant, “Neuroprotective Strategies for the Treatment of Blast-Induced Optic Neuropathy” is making way for discoveries that can lead to treatments for vision loss due to trauma. “The Department of Defense has such a great interest in my work because most of our wounded warriors were injured from blasts,” said Rex, associate professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. “We hear about it on the news all the time: improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, being used as the preferred mode of injury by various terrorist groups. It’s not just service members, but civilians are also being injured by these blasts. “The major signature injury from these wars is blast-induced traumatic brain injuries. There are estimates that upward of 75 percent of veterans with mild blast-induced traumatic brain injuries have vision problems. We need to understand what is […]

Kevin Dieter, PhD and the lab of Dr. Randolph Blake receive a prestigious National Eye Institute NRSA grant Project title: Psychophysical and neural correlates of eye dominance in human vision Advisor: Randolph Blake Consultants: Frank Tong, Psychological Sciences and Sean Donahue, Ophthalmology, Pediatrics, Neurology Summary: While we effortlessly see a single, unitary visual world, it is easy to forget that this experience arises from two separate (left and right eye) views of the environment. The transformation from distinct monocular views to stable binocular single vision is the manifestation of important neural processes that give rise to significant improvements in visual perception, including stereoscopic depth perception and binocular contrast summation. In cases of sensory eye dominance (SED), a condition where one of the two eyes contributes more strongly to the binocular percept than the other, these gains can be muted or, in extreme instances, completely thwarted. Under these conditions, vision with two eyes is no better than with one, and in some instances is worse owing to monocular competition. This project builds on the interesting recent discovery that SED may vary idiosyncratically throughout the visual field, potentially due to the local nature of visual mechanisms involved in combining neural signals from the two […]

When Anita Disney was growing up in Adelaide, Australia, friends and family assumed she would become a scientist. After all, her father was a biologist and one of the founding faculty members of Flinders University. But in what she admits may have been a bit of youthful rebellion, Disney gained admission to a performing arts magnet high school and threw herself into music, Shakespearean drama and dance classes. In college she pursued a bachelor of arts, majoring in drama. Then she encountered psychology. “I got really stuck on this biological psychology course I took,” Disney said. She soon transferred to Australian National University, where she studied under the noted neuroscientist Michael B. Calford. He introduced her to neurosteroids, a special class of steroids made in the brain that modulate the activity of neurotransmitters, the chemicals that carry information throughout the brain. During graduate studies at New York University, Disney worked with researchers studying the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. She came across what she thought was an extraordinary claim made by a British neuroscientist: Acetylcholine can sharpen cats’ vision. “I woke up one morning with the realization that I wanted to understand the role of acetylcholine in vision,” Disney said. For her doctoral thesis, […]

Assistant Professor of Psychology Alexander Maier has been selected to receive the Society for Neuroscience’s Janett Rosenberg Trubatch Career Development Award for 2014. The purpose of the award, which is given to only two individuals each year, is “to recognize individuals who have demonstrated originality and creativity in research and to promote success during academic transitions prior to tenure.” Maier was recognized for his efforts to understand the basic mystery of how perception arises from neural activities. A prime focus of his research program is to differentiate between the neural circuitry that is involved in visual perception and sensory activity that does not attain the level of conscious awareness. His work has important implications for treating patients with visual disorders characterized by an inability to perceive or recognize certain types of visual images. He is also one of a handful of scientists studying the relationship between the electrical activity in the brain and the variations in blood flow that are measured by the brain mapping technique fMRI, the most commonly used and most reliable method for measuring neural responses in the human brain.

Kevin Schey received the 2014 Cataract Research Award from the National Foundation for Eye Research.  This international award recognizes promising lens researchers who have conducted significant scientific work.  This award is presented annually at the Lens Business Meeting at ARVO.

Randolph Blake’s findings on how some people can see in pitch dark intrigues Scientific American, Slate, NPR and more.

Three years ago, a team of researchers led by David Calkins, Ph.D., vice chair and director of Research at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute, showed that the first sign of injury in glaucoma, the leading cause of blindness in the United States, occurs in the brain. In 2010, his team showed that glaucoma was similar to other age-related, central nervous system diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. That information allowed them to take a neurobiological approach in the development of potential treatment options that focused on neuronal activity in the middle brain, where the optic nerve forms its first connections. (photo by Joe Howell) Armed with the findings that the axons in the optic nerve lose their ability to communicate with their projection site in the mid-brain, the team proposed that if they could stop the loss of communication between the retina and the brain, then the ensuing degeneration ceases. “The standard of care for glaucoma treatment is a daily topical eye drop to control ocular pressure,” said Calkins. “But some 30 to 40 percent of patients continue to lose vision despite the treatment. We wanted to test whether a neuroprotective eye drop could stop neurodegeneration regardless of elevated ocular pressure. “There […]

John S. Penn, PhD, FARVO (Vanderbilt University School of Medicine) and David R. Williams, PhD, FARVO (University of Rochester School of Medicine) are the new ARVO vice presidents. ARVO is the largest and most respected eye and vision research organization in the world.

Alexander Maier, an assistant professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, has won a two-year, $50,000 research fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation aimed at encouraging promising young scholars. Full Story:   http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2013/02/alexander-maier-sloan-fellowship/

Isabel Gauthier has been elected as a Fellow of the Society for Experimental Psychologists. This is the oldest and most prestigious honorary society in Psychology, with only a handful of Fellows elected every year. This is a richly deserved honor for Isabel. Along with Randolph Blake, Jon Kaas, and Gordon Logan, our department now has 4 members in this Society. Congrats to Isabel! December 10, 2012