Missing optomotor head turning reflex in the DBA/2J mouse

This paper by Peter Barabas, Wei Huang, Hui Chen, Christopher L. Koehler, Gareth Howell, Simon W.M. John, Ning Tian, René C Rentería and David Križaj is an outcome of an attempt to follow glaucoma progression in the DBA/2J mouse model of a naturally occurring, late onset form of glaucoma.  Ideally, a non-invasive technique should be used and in this case, they used a device to take advantage of the optomotor head turning reflex to assess progressive loss of vision.  This reflex is very similar to the involuntary rotation of the eye in response to a rotating visual stimulus and it is present in all animals from fish to mammals (including humans).  Interestingly, the DBA/2J strain was found to utterly lack this reflex.

Continue reading “Missing optomotor head turning reflex in the DBA/2J mouse”

An Instructive Role for Patterned Spontaneous Retinal Activity in Mouse Visual Map Development

This paper by Hongping Xu, Moran Furman, Yann S. Mineur, Hui Chen, Sarah L. King, David Zenisek, Z. Jimmy Zhou, Daniel A. Butts, Ning Tian, Marina R. Picciotto and Michael Crair describes a collaborative effort from several laboratories from Yale University, the University of Maryland and the University of Utah.  Two former postdoctoral fellows from the laboratory of Ning Tian, Drs. Hongping Xu (the first author) and Hui Chen, were principal contributors. Continue reading “An Instructive Role for Patterned Spontaneous Retinal Activity in Mouse Visual Map Development”