The discovery of light-sensitive neurons that can adjust our body clocks prompted a search for their light-detecting molecule. We now know the identity of this pigment — and that these cells do more ...

Better known as the light sensor that sets the body's biological clock, melanopsin also plays an important role in vision: Via its messengers-so-called melanopsin-expressing retinal ganglion cells, or ...

For most, the time spent staring at screens -- on computers, phones, iPads -- constitutes many hours and can often disrupt sleep. Now, researchers have pinpointed how certain cells in the eye process ...

Over the past two decades there have been significant advances in our understanding of both the anatomy and function of the melanopsin system. It has become clear that rather than acting as a simple ...

Melanopsin, a blue photoreceptor in retinal cells, receives blue light each morning and transmits the signal via the nerves of the eye to the SCN, the circadian rhythm central pacemaker. The photo ...

(Medical Xpress)—Light is inextricably intertwined in myriad ways with most life on Earth. In humans, for example, light stimulates alertness and cognition, improving performance and increasing ...

Better known as the light sensor that sets the body's biological clock, melanopsin also plays an important role in vision: Via its messengers-so-called melanopsin-expressing retinal ganglion cells, or ...

Researchers from Imperial College London, Johns Hopkins University, USA and Brown University, USA have discovered that melanopsin, a recently identified protein, plays a key role in a completely new ...

Scientists have discovered that part of the eye's light-gathering machinery works in a previously unknown way to relay visual information to the brain. Experiments in mice have established that ...

DNA aptamers of melanopsin that regulate the clock hands of biological rhythms were developed by the Toyohashi University of Technology and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and ...

(Medical Xpress)—A team of researchers in Belgium has found that people exposed to orange light exhibit greater brain activity than those exposed to blue light. In their paper published in Proceedings ...

At top left, an X-gal stained retina from a mouse heterozygous for a LacZ knockin at the melanopsin locus reveals axons coursing toward the optic disc. At top right, a melanopsin antibody labels cell ...