Jason Jacoby, PhD

Before being admitted into graduate school, I worked in the organ and tissue transplant industry focusing on the surgical recovery of human ocular tissues.  My efforts in recovering corneas and whole-eye tissues resulted in thousands of transplantation surgeries, and in most cases the subsequent restoration of the recipient’s sight.  It was here where I truly found my passion. This challenging work launched me directly into the rapidly evolving field of neuroscience and retinal physiology for both my doctoral research and postdoctoral fellowship.

      My body of work has focused on deciphering how retinal neurons process visual information through various cellular mechanisms and complex synaptic microcircuitry. A successful graduate research project contributed to our current understanding of lateral inhibition in the retina, a fundamental theme in neural processing throughout the brain and nervous system. This research focused primarily on the pH dynamics of retinal horizontal cells and helped to shed light on the role that protons play, or don't play, in feedback inhibition facilitated at the cone-horizontal cell synapse.

       As an NRSA postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Ophthalmology at Northwestern University, I am looking at the visual response properties and microcircuitry of two novel amacrine cell subtypes, the least understood (and most numerous) class of neurons in the retina. I will employ a precise combination of genetics, electrophysiology, and fluorescent imaging to probe the specific function of their inhibitory in retinal circuitry. In order to fully understand how visual processing takes place within the retina before being projected to higher brain centers, we must elucidate the role of amacrine cell-driven inhibitory circuits.

         My hope is that following my passion of physiological research of the retina will help build a foundation on which clinical therapies and medical intervention can be developed to ultimately restore sight in human patients. I am driven by the belief that helping others is one of the most powerful elements of being human.