Michael H. Rowe

Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
phone: 740-593-2112
fax: 740-593-0300
rowe@ohiou.edu

Research: Neurobiology of Vision

The eye is an optical device that produces an image of our immediate environment. These images are our most reliable source of information about the world around us. The images are analyzed by a sheet of neural tissue at the back of the eye called the retina. The retina extracts information from the image and encodes this information into a form that the brain uses to create our visual world. A major goal of the research in my lab is to understand how images and visual information are represented, both in the retina and in the brain. To accomplish this goal, the activity of individual neurons in the retina and in visual centers in the brain is monitored with microelectrodes while the neurons are presented with computer generated stimuli. The responses of the cells to these stimuli are then used to construct 2- and 3-dimensional models that help us understand how the visual information in the image is processed by the brain. More

Education

University of California, Riverside, 1975

Representative Publications

• Rowe, M.H. (1995) Spatio-temporal receptive field structure of phasic W-cell in the cat retina. Vis. Neurosci. 12:117-139.
• Rowe, M.H. and J.C. Cox (1993) Spatial receptive field structure of cat retinal W-cells. Vis.Neurosci. 10:765-779.
• Burke, W., B. Dreher, A. Michalski, B.G. Cleland, and M.H. Rowe (1992) The effects of selective pressure block of Y-type optic nerve fibers on the receptive field properties of neurons in the striate cortex of the cat. Vis. Neurosci. 9:47-64.
• Rowe, M.H. (1991) The functional organization of the retina. In: Vision and Visual Dysfunction, Vol. III, Neuroanatomy of the visual pathways and their retinotopic organization.
• Dreher, B. and S.R. Robinson, eds. Macmillan Press, Hampshire, pp. 1-68.Webster, M.J. and M.H. Rowe (1991) Disruption of developmental timing in the albino rat retina. J. Comp. Neurol. 307:460-474.