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Night vision. You’re awake in the middle of the night. It’s nearly pitch black. You can hear something moving. You can discern the shapes of things around you, but it’s nearly impossible to follow the movement with your eyes. That’s because of changes in the neural circuitry of the retina as it adapts to differing light conditions, says Paul Cook, a CAS assistant professor of biology, whose vision research – modulation of glycinergic inhibition in the vertebrate retina – will be supported by the Medical Foundation New Investigator Award, Harcourt General Charitable Foundation, which is based in Boston.

Our ability to see the world relies in part on the capacity of the retina’s neural circuitry to function over a wide range of light intensities. As is evident each time you walk out of bright sunlight into a dimly lit movie theater, adaptation to the lower light level is not instantaneous. A variety of chemical mechanisms regulate this process, governing the sensitivity and flow of signals passing through the neural networks that send signals from the retina to the brain.

As the eye adapts to dim light, several mechanisms alter the way the retina signals information. One modification involves the suppression of the inhibitory neurotransmitter, glycine, which is involved in motion detection. It is not known how this suppression occurs, but by studying the movement detection circuits in the dark-adapted retina of the tiger salamander, Cook hopes to discover the cellular and chemical mechanisms that underlie the process. In doing so, he expects to find valuable information that may
reveal how glycine is modulated in neural circuitry in other areas of the body, such as the spinal column, where glycine is involved in pain pathways. The research has possible implications for improvements in anesthesia and pain therapy.

Visit bio.bu.edu/Faculty_Staff/cook.html for more information about Cook’s work.

No longer taboo. Researchers at Boston University Medical Center have received the first-ever award from the National Institutes of Health to study female sexual arousal dysfunction. The $1 million grant will fund studies of the physiological and biochemical mechanisms involved in female sexual arousal, and provide the groundwork for the potential development of new therapeutic agents for women.

"Male erectile dysfunction has been studied for the past 20 years," says Abdulmaged Traish, a MED professor of biochemistry and urology and director of the school’s Urology Research Laboratory. "Female sexual arousal disorder was never an issue discussed in scientific circles, and almost considered taboo."

Traish’s colleague, MED Urology Professor Irwin Goldstein, has been researching female sexual dysfunction from a clinical perspective for the past two years. Together they have organized the largest international, multidisciplinary meeting on the subject, the Female Sexual Function Forum, to be held for the third time this year, from October 26 to 29, at the Marriot Copley Hotel in Boston. Visit bumc.bu.edu/www/busm/cme/FSD00/pradj.htm for an agenda of the conference.

"Research Briefs" is written by Joan Schwartz in the Office of the Provost. To read more about BU research, visit http://www.bu.edu/research.

6 December 2000
Boston University
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