Affiliation: University of Nebraska Medical Center

Wallace B. Thoreson is the Gilmore Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Director of Research in the Truhlsen Eye Institute at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), Omaha, NE. He received his BA from Carleton College, Minnesota followed by graduate training in the Departments of Physiology and Psychology at the University of Minnesota with Dwight Burkhardt and Richard Purple. He continued at the University of Minnesota with post-doctoral training in neuroscience and eye research under Robert F. Miller. He joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska in 1993.  His research combines various imaging and electrophysiological methods to study mechanisms of neurotransmission and early visual processing in the vertebrate retina, particularly at rod and cone ribbon synapses. Electrophysiological techniques in the laboratory include whole cell patch clamp, single channel recordings, and membrane capacitance measurements. Imaging techniques in the laboratory include confocal Ca²⁺ imaging, total internal reflectance imaging of single vesicle fusion events, and imaging of individual calcium channels labeled with quantum dots.