About

Jianhua (JC) Cang has been conducting research in the field of visual neuroscience since 2003. He has directed a Visual Neuroscience laboratory since 2006, initially at Northwestern University and subsequently at the University of Virginia (UVA). His work is described as "eye-opening" research, indicating a focus on vision and the neural mechanisms underlying it. Currently, he holds the position of Paul T. Jones Professor at UVA, where he continues to lead his research efforts in visual neuroscience.

Research topics

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Computer Science
• Mathematics
• Geometry
• Cognitive psychology
• Genetics
• Computer vision
• Communication

Selected publications

• Probabilistically constrained vector summation of motion direction in the mouse superior colliculus

  Current Biology · 2025-01-21 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Co-Conservation of Synaptic Gene Expression and Circuitry in Collicular Neurons

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-01-23

  preprintOpen access

  ABSTRACT The superior colliculus (SC), a midbrain sensorimotor hub, is anatomically and functionally similar across vertebrates, but how its cell types have evolved is unclear. Using single-nucleus transcriptomics, we compared the SC’s molecular and cellular organization in mice, tree shrews, and humans. Despite over 96 million years of evolutionary divergence, we identified ∼30 consensus neuronal subtypes, including Cbln2 + neurons that form the SC-pulvinar circuit in mice and tree shrews. Synapse-related genes were among the most conserved, unlike neocortex, suggesting co-conservation of synaptic genes and circuitry. In contrast, cilia-related genes diverged significantly across species, highlighting the potential importance of the neuronal primary cilium in SC evolution. Additionally, we identified a novel inhibitory SC neuron in tree shrews and humans but not mice. Our findings reveal that the SC has evolved by conserving neuron subtypes, synaptic genes, and circuitry, while diversifying ciliary gene expression and an inhibitory neuron subtype.

  PublisherDOI

• Co-Conservation of synaptic gene expression and circuitry in collicular neurons

  Nature Communications · 2025-10-15 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  The superior colliculus (SC), a midbrain sensorimotor hub, is anatomically and functionally similar across vertebrates, but how its cell types have evolved is unclear. Using single-nucleus transcriptomics, we compared the SC’s molecular and cellular organization in mice, tree shrews, and humans. Despite over 96 million years of evolutionary divergence, we identified ~30 consensus neuronal subtypes, including Cbln2+ neurons that form the SC-pulvinar circuit in mice and tree shrews. Synapse-related genes were among the most conserved in the SC, unlike neocortex, suggesting co-conservation of synaptic genes and collicular circuitry. In contrast, cilia-related genes diverged significantly across species, highlighting the potential importance of the neuronal primary cilium in SC evolution. Additionally, we identified an inhibitory SC neuron in tree shrews and humans but not mice. Our findings reveal that the SC has evolved by conserving neuron subtypes, synaptic genes, and circuitry, while diversifying ciliary gene expression and an inhibitory neuron subtype. The molecular and cellular evolution of the superior colliculus, a key visual center, is unclear. Liu et al. revealed conserved and species-specific cell types, genes, and circuits across mice, tree shrews, and humans by single-cell transcriptomics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Synergistic Geniculate and Cortical Dynamics Facilitate a Decorrelated Spatial Frequency Code in the Early Visual System

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2025-11-13

  articleOpen access

  Sensory stimuli are encoded by the neuronal firing patterns they evoke in the brain. This neural code becomes less correlated as information ascends through the visual system. In the primary visual cortex (V1), a spatial frequency (SF) tuning shift from coarse-to-fine features occurs alongside a reduction in correlations between stimulus representations. Our previous study suggested that this decorrelation is facilitated by coarse-to-fine processing in V1. However, there is evidence that coarse-to-fine processing emerges in the upstream dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN), and it is unknown whether correlations between stimulus representations also decrease in this brain region. Therefore, the extent to which decorrelation is inherited from dLGN, is driven by local circuit dynamics in V1, or is the result of synergy between these areas is unknown. In this study, we compared extracellular neuronal activity recorded from dLGN and V1 of mice (of either sex) in response to sinusoidal gratings of different SFs. Despite also exhibiting coarse-to-fine processing, dLGN did not exhibit decorrelation in contrast to V1, suggesting that decorrelation emerges following a cortical transformation. In V1, many units exhibited a delayed shift to suppression that interacted with coarse-to-fine shifts on a time course coinciding with the decorrelation. Our results are therefore consistent with decorrelation emerging in V1 from a synergy between response properties in both dLGN and V1. These results demonstrate that geniculocortical dynamics enable discrimination between rich visual details and highlight the importance of cross-regional synergy to sensory processing.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Accessing genetically defined cell types in the superior colliculus with transgenic mouse lines

  iScience · 2025-03-11 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Recent studies have revealed diverse neuron types in the superior colliculus (SC), a midbrain structure critical for sensorimotor transformation. Here, as an important step toward studying the function of these subtypes, we characterize 10 transgenic mouse lines based on a recently published molecular atlas of the superficial SC. We show that Cre or fluorescence expression in some lines corresponds specifically to certain transcriptomic neuron types. These include two GENSAT lines that have been used to target morphological cell types in the SC and three knockin lines. In contrast, such a correspondence is not seen in other tested mice. Importantly, the expression pattern of marker genes in all these lines is highly consistent with the molecular atlas. Together, our studies support a correlation between morphological and transcriptomic neuron types, identify useful lines for targeting SC neuron types genetically, and demonstrate the validity of the single-cell transcriptomics data.

  PublisherDOI

• Visual Motion Processing in The Tree Shrew Superior Colliculus

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2025-11-21

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Recent research has established that the superior colliculus (SC) plays a key role in visual motion processing and visually guided behaviors. However, differences across species have made it difficult to integrate findings from various animal models to form a general understanding of the SC. Here we use the tree shrew-a species evolutionarily intermediate between rodents and primates-to help bridge our understanding of this ancient brain structure. We recorded visual responses from the tree shrew (of either sex) SC neurons in vivo using a battery of motion stimuli, including drifting gratings, random dot kinematograms, and plaid patterns of superimposed gratings. Tree shrew SC neurons overall preferred low spatial and high temporal frequencies, as well as high speed of motion. They showed a mixed selectivity for motion components and integrated pattern, with integration consistent with a vector sum rule. Compared to mice, tree shrew SC showed similar tuning properties to basic visual features but exhibited a lower degree of motion integration reminiscent of visual cortices in other species. Finally, tree shrews displayed optokinetic eye movements, a visual-motion-induced reflexive behavior, and the response induced by plaids largely followed the vector sum rule. Together, our study provides fundamental insights into visual motion representation in the tree shrew SC and establishes a foundation for future comparative studies on visual processing in the SC.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Transformation of Motion Pattern Selectivity from Retina to Superior Colliculus

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2024-04-03 · 12 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The superior colliculus (SC) is a prominent and conserved visual center in all vertebrates. In mice, the most superficial lamina of the SC is enriched with neurons that are selective for the moving direction of visual stimuli. Here, we study how these direction selective neurons respond to complex motion patterns known as plaids, using two-photon calcium imaging in awake male and female mice. The plaid pattern consists of two superimposed sinusoidal gratings moving in different directions, giving an apparent pattern direction that lies between the directions of the two component gratings. Most direction selective neurons in the mouse SC respond robustly to the plaids and show a high selectivity for the moving direction of the plaid pattern but not of its components. Pattern motion selectivity is seen in both excitatory and inhibitory SC neurons and is especially prevalent in response to plaids with large cross angles between the two component gratings. However, retinal inputs to the SC are ambiguous in their selectivity to pattern versus component motion. Modeling suggests that pattern motion selectivity in the SC can arise from a nonlinear transformation of converging retinal inputs. In contrast, the prevalence of pattern motion selective neurons is not seen in the primary visual cortex (V1). These results demonstrate an interesting difference between the SC and V1 in motion processing and reveal the SC as an important site for encoding pattern motion.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Visible-Light Optical Coherence Tomography Fibergraphy of the Tree Shrew Retinal Ganglion Cell Axon Bundles

  IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging · 2024-03-22 · 18 citations

  articleOpen access

  We seek to develop techniques for high-resolution imaging of the tree shrew retina for visualizing and parameterizing retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axon bundles in vivo. We applied visible-light optical coherence tomography fibergraphy (vis-OCTF) and temporal speckle averaging (TSA) to visualize individual RGC axon bundles in the tree shrew retina. For the first time, we quantified individual RGC bundle width, height, and cross-sectional area and applied vis-OCT angiography (vis-OCTA) to visualize the retinal microvasculature in tree shrews. Throughout the retina, as the distance from the optic nerve head (ONH) increased from 0.5 mm to 2.5 mm, bundle width increased by 30%, height decreased by 67%, and cross-sectional area decreased by 36%. We also showed that axon bundles become vertically elongated as they converge toward the ONH. Ex vivo confocal microscopy of retinal flat-mounts immunostained with Tuj1 confirmed our in vivo vis-OCTF findings.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Comparative In Vivo Imaging of Retinal Structures in Tree Shrews, Humans, and Mice

  eNeuro · 2024-03-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  Rodent models, such as mice and rats, are commonly used to examine retinal ganglion cell damage in eye diseases. However, as nocturnal animals, rodent retinal structures differ from primates, imposing significant limitations in studying retinal pathology. Tree shrews ( Tupaia belangeri ) are small, diurnal paraprimates that exhibit superior visual acuity and color vision compared with mice. Like humans, tree shrews have a dense retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) and a thick ganglion cell layer (GCL), making them a valuable model for investigating optic neuropathies. In this study, we applied high-resolution visible-light optical coherence tomography to characterize the tree shrew retinal structure in vivo and compare it with that of humans and mice. We quantitatively characterize the tree shrew's retinal layer structure in vivo, specifically examining the sublayer structures within the inner plexiform layer (IPL) for the first time. Next, we conducted a comparative analysis of retinal layer structures among tree shrews, mice, and humans. We then validated our in vivo findings in the tree shrew inner retina using ex vivo confocal microscopy. The in vivo and ex vivo analyses of the shrew retina build the foundation for future work to accurately track and quantify the retinal structural changes in the IPL, GCL, and RNFL during the development and progression of human optic diseases.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Genetically defined neuron types underlying visuomotor transformation in the superior colliculus

  Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2024-09-27 · 23 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Neural Mechanisms of Stereoscopic Vision

  NIH · $5.4M · 2010–2030

• NIH Grant R01EY018621

  NIH · $1.5M · 2013

• Cell Type Specific Visual Processing in the Superior Colliculus

  NIH · $3.9M · 2015–2029

• NIH Grant R21EY023060

  NIH · $421k · 2015

Frequent coauthors

• Michael P. Stryker

  University of California, San Francisco

  34 shared

• Xiaorong Liu

  University of Virginia

  25 shared

• Hui Chen

  Guilin University of Electronic Technology

  18 shared

• Xuefeng Shi

  Qinghai Provincial Peoples Hospital

  13 shared

• Siegrid Löwel

  University of Göttingen

  12 shared

• Élise Savier

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  12 shared

• Valery A. Kalatsky

  University of Houston

  10 shared

• Mingna Liu

  University of Virginia

  10 shared

Labs

• Cang LabPI

  1-2 sentence research focus

Awards & honors

• Paul T. Jones Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor, Biolo…