TY - JOUR
T1 - Three small-receptive-field ganglion cells in the mouse retina are distinctly tuned to size, speed, and object motion
AU - Jacoby, Jason
AU - Schwartz, Gregory W.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellowship 1F32EY025930-01, National Institutes of Health Grant DP2-DEY026770A, and a Research to Prevent Blindness Career Development Award. We thank our laboratory manager, Susan Wohlgenant, for her extensive experimental preparation and technical assistance. We thank Sam Cooler, for helping to produce an effective and important centering stimulus for the HD RGCs, and Dr. Adam Mani, for various data analysis codes used in this research study. Wethank Jianhua Cang, Tiffany Schmidt, Steven H. DeVries, and William Grimes for their commentary on early drafts of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 the authors.
PY - 2017/1/18
Y1 - 2017/1/18
N2 - Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) are frequently divided into functional types by their ability to extract and relay specific features from a visual scene, such as the capacity to discern local or global motion, direction of motion, stimulus orientation, contrast or uniformity, or the presence of large or small objects. Here we introduce three previously uncharacterized, nondirection-selective ON–OFF RGC types that represent a distinct set of feature detectors in the mouse retina. The three high-definition (HD) RGCs possess small receptive-field centers and strong surround suppression. They respond selectively to objects of specific sizes, speeds, and types of motion. We present comprehensive morphological characterization of theHDRGCs and physiological recordings of their light responses, receptive-field size and structure, and synaptic mechanisms of surround suppression. We also explore the similarities and differences between the HD RGCs and a well characterized RGC with a comparably small receptive field, the local edge detector, in response to moving objects and textures. We model populations of each RGC type to study how they differ in their performance tracking a moving object. These results, besides introducing three new RGC types that together constitute a substantial fraction of mouse RGCs, provide insights into the role of different circuits in shaping RGC receptive fields and establish a foundation for continued study of the mechanisms of surround suppression and the neural basis of motion detection.
AB - Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) are frequently divided into functional types by their ability to extract and relay specific features from a visual scene, such as the capacity to discern local or global motion, direction of motion, stimulus orientation, contrast or uniformity, or the presence of large or small objects. Here we introduce three previously uncharacterized, nondirection-selective ON–OFF RGC types that represent a distinct set of feature detectors in the mouse retina. The three high-definition (HD) RGCs possess small receptive-field centers and strong surround suppression. They respond selectively to objects of specific sizes, speeds, and types of motion. We present comprehensive morphological characterization of theHDRGCs and physiological recordings of their light responses, receptive-field size and structure, and synaptic mechanisms of surround suppression. We also explore the similarities and differences between the HD RGCs and a well characterized RGC with a comparably small receptive field, the local edge detector, in response to moving objects and textures. We model populations of each RGC type to study how they differ in their performance tracking a moving object. These results, besides introducing three new RGC types that together constitute a substantial fraction of mouse RGCs, provide insights into the role of different circuits in shaping RGC receptive fields and establish a foundation for continued study of the mechanisms of surround suppression and the neural basis of motion detection.
KW - Feature selectivity
KW - Object motion
KW - Retina
KW - Retinal ganglion cell
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U2 - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2804-16.2016
DO - 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2804-16.2016
M3 - Article
C2 - 28100743
AN - SCOPUS:85010301070
VL - 37
SP - 610
EP - 625
JO - Journal of Neuroscience
JF - Journal of Neuroscience
SN - 0270-6474
IS - 3
ER -