Sidney A. Fox and Dorothea Doctors Fox Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science

Overview

I am a 'lifer' at Brown, having done undergraduate and postdoctoral studies here before joining the faculty in 1985. I conduct basic research on the structure and function of the visual system and teach neuroanatomy and neurophysiology to undergraduate, graduate and medical students. My lab studies what the eye tells the brain. We focus on retinal neurons that send information directly to visual centers of the brain. There are roughly twenty types of these output cells, each with anatomical and physiological features matched to the requirements of specific visual behaviors. We recently discovered that some of them are true photoreceptors; they respond directly to light like rods and cones and synchronize the biological clock and constrict the pupil. We also study retinal output cells that stabilize our view of the world. We want to understand how these cells work and how their signals are used by the brain.

Brown Affiliations

Research Areas