The Usrey lab has joined with the labs of Sabine Kastner (Princeton) and Michael Halassa (Tufts University) in a project funded by the Conte Center to study the role of the thalamus in cognition.  Here's to a fruitful collaboration and ton of impactful scientific results!

(belated) Congratulations to Alyssa Sanchez, who has received her PhD from the Usrey lab!  Alyssa has moved on to a postdoc in the Wallis lab at UC Berkeley!  We wish her all the best in her future endeavors!

Melissa Stroud has joined the lab as a Staff Research Associate!  She will be working with the animals and doing research related to the Conte Center Consortium on the Cognitive Thalamus!

Kimchee Tran has joined the lab as a Junior Specialist!  She will be working with the animals and doing research related to the Conte Center Consortium on the Cognitive Thalamus!

Usrey Lab alumnus Dr. Daniel Rathbun appeared on CBS Detroit this week to discuss his work on optical implants placed in V1 of humans - Daniel is creating actual cyborgs!  Although currently the implants only cover a few visual degrees and are limited to about 1000 pixels of information, Daniel's goal over the next few years is to be able to increase the field of view and to bring the resolution up to the megapixel range.  We'll be sure to keep an eye on Daniel's work as he fulfills his passion of bringing sight to the blind!

Dr. Sabine Kastner of Princeton has traveled to Davis to spend a few weeks here as a visiting researcher over the summer.  Dr. Kastner and Dr. Usrey are collaborating on a multi-site grant, and we hope to get a lot of good work done in the few weeks that she will be with us!

The Usrey lab was lucky to have an undergraduate student, Sara Chantit around for the past year!  Sara has recently graduated from UCD and is now off to pharmacy school.  We wish her all the best, and thank her for her time in the lab!

Graduate student Alyssa Sanchez has just published her paper, "Stimulus contrast modulates burst activity in the lateral geniculate nucleus" in Current Research in Neurobiology! 

Here she shows that bursts and tonic spikes in the LGN can differentially encode information about the contrast of a visual stimulus, and that the rate, reliability, and temporal precision of burst spikes increases with stimulus contrast.

You can access the paper here:

Our good friend Scottie Alexander has completed his dissertation, entitled "The Transformation of Visual Information Across Cortical and Subcortical Synapses"!  On Tuesday, May 16th he dazzled near and far (at least one Zoom attendee!) with his exit seminar, giving us a peek at just some of the work he has done as a member of the Usrey lab.  Scottie and his talents (and his dog Maddie) will be missed greatly as he moves on to bigger and better things. 

Best of luck, Scottie!  Don't be a stranger!

Reports are coming in a bit late, but it appears that the Usrey Lab took a weekend trip to the Oregon coast sometime in the vicinity of Memorial Day 2022.  There was food, fun, family, and plenty of photos - unfortunately, we appear to be limited to putting one photo up here, so take a look at the lab standing in front of Proposal Rock!