Tim Gollisch

Professor for Sensory Processing in the Retina

• since 2010 Professor for Sensory Processing in the Retina, University Medical Center Göttingen, Department of Ophthalmology

• 2007-2010 Max Planck Research Group Leader, MPI of Neurobiology, Munich-Martinsried

• 2004-2007 Postdoctoral fellow, Harvard University, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

• 2004 PhD in biophysics, Humboldt University Berlin

• 2000 Diploma in physics, University of Heidelberg

Major Research Interests:

Tim Gollisch

We are interested in how the neuronal network of the retina processes visual signals. The focus of our work is on studying the function of the various neuron types in the retina and their synaptic connections. One goal is to better understand the "neural code" of the retina: how do the patterns of electrical activity in retinal neurons transmit information about the visual environment to downstream brain areas? Another goal is to better understand "neural computation" in the retina: how do the cells in the retinal network interact to produce a specific, useful response? On the basis of these questions, we also study how dysfunction of the retinal circuitry, for example in retinal diseases, compromises sensory processing. Our investigations are based on various techniques of recording the activity of neurons in the retina while stimulating the network with different visual images or movies. We use multi-electrode array recordings, whole-cell patch-clamp recordings, and fluorescence imaging and combine the experiments with statistical analyses and mathematical modeling.

Address:
Dept. of Ophthalmology
University Medical Center Göttingen
Waldweg 33
37073 Göttingen
Germany

phone:+49-551-39 13542
e-mail:

Further Information:
Workgroup

Selected Recent Publications:

Garvert MM, Gollisch T (2013) Local and global contrast adaptation in retinal ganglion cells. Neuron 77: 915-928

Bölinger D, Gollisch T (2012) Closed-loop measurements of iso-response stimuli reveal dynamic nonlinear stimulus integration in the retina. Neuron 73: 333-346

Gollisch T, Meister M (2010) Eye smarter than scientists believed: Neural computation in circuits of the retina. Neuron 65: 150-164

Gollisch T (2009) Throwing a glance at the neural code: Rapid information transmission in the visual system. HFSP Journal 3: 36-46

Gollisch T, Meister M (2008a) Rapid neural coding in the retina with relative spike latencies. Science 319: 1108-1111

Gollisch T (2008) Time-warp invariant pattern detection with bursting neurons. New J Phys 10: 015012

Herz AVM, Gollisch T, Machens CK, Jaeger D (2006) Modeling single-neuron dynamics and computations: A balance of detail and abstraction. Science 314: 80-85

Gollisch T (2006) Estimating receptive fields in the presence of spike-time jitter. Network 17: 103-129

Gollisch T, Herz AVM (2005) Disentangling sub-millisecond processes within an auditory transduction chain. PLoS Biology 3: e8

Gollisch T, Herz AVM (2004) Input-driven components of spike-frequency adaptation can be unmasked in vivo. J Neurosci 24: 7435-7444