Abstract
Antagonistic receptive field surrounds are a near-universal property of early sensory processing. A key assumption in many models for retinal ganglion cell encoding is that receptive field surrounds are added only to the fully formed center signal. But anatomical and functional observations indicate that surrounds are added before the summation of signals across receptive field subunits that creates the center. Here, we show that this receptive field architecture has an important consequence for spatial contrast encoding in the macaque monkey retina: the surround can control sensitivity to fine spatial structure by changing the way the center integrates visual information over space. The impact of the surround is particularly prominent when center and surround signals are correlated, as they are in natural stimuli. This effect of the surround differs substantially from classic center-surround models and raises the possibility that the surround plays unappreciated roles in shaping ganglion cell sensitivity to natural inputs.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | e38841 |
Journal | eLife |
Volume | 7 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2018 |
Funding
We thank Shellee Cunnington and Mark Cafaro for excellent technical support. Tissue was provided by the Tissue Distribution Program at the Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC), and we are grateful for assistance from the WaNPRC staff, especially Chris English and Drew May. Raunak Sinha and Mike Manookin assisted in tissue preparation. We thank Nora Brackbill, Jon Cafaro, Mike Manookin, Luis Gonzalo Sánchez Giraldo and Odelia Schwartz for helpful feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. This work was supported by NIH grants F31-EY026288 (MHT) and EY028542 (FR) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (FR). We thank Shellee Cunnington and Mark Cafaro for excellent technical support. Tissue was provided by the Tissue Distribution Program at the Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC), and we are grateful for assistance from the WaNPRC staff, especially Chris English and Drew May. Raunak Sinha and Mike Manookin assisted in tissue preparation. We thank Nora Brackbill, Jon Cafaro, Mike Manookin, Luis Gonzalo Sánchez Giraldo and Odelia Schwartz for helpful feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. This work was supported by NIH grants F31-EY026288 (MHT) and EY028542 (FR) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (FR).Funder Grant reference number Author National Eye Institute F31-EY026288 Maxwell H Turner National Eye Institute EY028542 Fred Rieke Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fred Rieke The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
- General Immunology and Microbiology
- General Neuroscience