Work performed during this fellowship was broadly divided into six work packages, where packages 1-4 where strictly connected to the scientific question asked and thus animal and laboratory work, whereas work packages 5-6 were ascribed to project management and dissemination. The MSCA Research Fellow worked at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Professor Rob Lucas between 2nd September 2020 and 1st September 2022. Experiments performed during WP1 has shown that melanopsin contributes to visual responses, enhances contrast sensitivity and contributes to spatio-temporal frequency tuning at the level of neuronal activity in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN, part of the visual thalamus). These results confirm melanopsin role in image-forming vision. Results acquired during WP2 and WP3 show that regardless of the temporal niche, neurons within the biological clock (hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus, SCN) not only respond to light stimuli in a similar way but also sufficiently well code irradiance in their maintained firing rate even when more naturalistic stimuli are co-applied. On the other hand, the high percentage and sensory diversity of light-responsive neurons outside the SCN in R. pumilio suggest widespread processing of more sophisticated visual information in the peri-SCN region suggesting enlargement of the visual hypothalamus in this diurnal rodent. Work performed during WP4 resulted in developing a method allowing simultaneous neuronal brain activity recordings and 3D tracking of freely moving animals. The main results showed a widespread coupling between neuronal activity in the visual thalamus and select behavioural parameters. In particular, postures associated with the animal looking up (“look up” neurons) or when the animal was looking down (“look-down” neurons). Developed method can be applied to various behavioural experiments where animal perform specific tasks or are freely moving. WP5 was devoted to project management and MSCA Fellow training activities which were mostly focus on improving her laboratory and analytical skills and research productivity, as well as learning new tools, methods, and techniques. All of it was implemented and successfully achieved. In WP6, the Fellow has participated in eight scientific conferences and meetings in the UK and outside as an active participant so giving talks and presenting scientific posters showing MEL-ROD project results. She has also delivered ten public engagement activities spanning from meetings with high school pupils, to talk about carrier in science, to being active in social media and post about MEL-ROD results and updates.
Datasets acquired by implementing WP1-WP4 are reported in 1) two scientific papers published in high impact factor journals (Current Biology and Scientific Reports), 2) three upcoming manuscripts which are under development, 3) four talks and 4) four scientific posters presented during conferences in and outside the UK. The Fellow was awarded the best poster award twice for the result acquired during implementation of MEL-ROD project.
