BG 35A RM 3E614
35A CONVENT DR
BETHESDA MD 20892
Dr. Grimes received his B.A. from Monmouth College in 2003, and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 2008, where he studied synaptic transmission and dendritic integration in the mammalian retina. During his postdoctoral training with Dr. Fred Rieke at the University of Washington, Dr. Grimes studied the neural basis of retinal computation and human perception under intermediate lighting conditions. Dr. Grimes joined NINDS as a Staff Scientist in 2017, and is currently focused on the functional roles of retinal interneurons in healthy and diseased mammals.
Interneurons play critical roles in diverse computations throughout the brain, and retinal amacrine cells (i.e. retinal interneurons) are no exception. For example, direction-selectivity (i.e. encoding of directed motion) is critically dependent on asymmetric GABA release from starburst amacrine cell. Recent work has revealed highly diverse amacrine morphologies that are thought to play an equally diverse role in retinal processing, but very few amacrine subtypes have been studied in any detail. To better understand the physiology and connectivity of new retinal amacrine subtypes, Dr. Grimes and his lab employ a plethora of techniques that include patch clamp recordings, optogenetics, and functional imaging.