Characterization of Retinal Functionality at Different Eccentricities in a Diurnal Rodent

Escobar, María-José; Reyes, Cesar; Herzog, Rubén; Araya, Joaquin; Otero, Mónica; Ibaceta, Cristobal; Palacios, Adrián

doi:10.3389/fncel.2018.00444

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 73 publications

(100 reference statements)

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“…Typically, these so-called ON/OFF asymmetries are investigated at a given, limited retinal location, and results obtained from central and peripheral parts of the retina could sometimes not be reconciled [ 116 , 119 , 120 ]. This points to the existence of region-specific ON/OFF asymmetries in the retina [ 121 ], which must eventually be rooted in regional differences of synaptic circuitry. Our study demonstrates large-scale differences between gap junctions involved in the ON and OFF networks of the retina potentially contributing to region-specific functional ON/OFF asymmetries.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Variation of Gap Junctional Connections in the Mammalian Inner Retina

Fusz

Kovács-Öller

Kóbor

et al. 2021

Cells

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The retinas of many species show regional specialisations that are evident in the differences in the processing of visual input from different parts of the visual field. Regional specialisation is thought to reflect an adaptation to the natural visual environment, optical constraints, and lifestyle of the species. Yet, little is known about regional differences in synaptic circuitry. Here, we were interested in the topographical distribution of connexin-36 (Cx36), the major constituent of electrical synapses in the retina. We compared the retinas of mice, rats, and cats to include species with different patterns of regional specialisations in the analysis. First, we used the density of Prox1-immunoreactive amacrine cells as a marker of any regional specialisation, with higher cell density signifying more central regions. Double-labelling experiments showed that Prox1 is expressed in AII amacrine cells in all three species. Interestingly, large Cx36 plaques were attached to about 8–10% of Prox1-positive amacrine cell somata, suggesting the strong electrical coupling of pairs or small clusters of cell bodies. When analysing the regional changes in the volumetric density of Cx36-immunoreactive plaques, we found a tight correlation with the density of Prox1-expressing amacrine cells in the ON, but not in the OFF sublamina in all three species. The results suggest that the relative contribution of electrical synapses to the ON- and OFF-pathways of the retina changes with retinal location, which may contribute to functional ON/OFF asymmetries across the visual field.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Variation of Gap Junctional Connections in the Mammalian Inner Retina

Fusz

Kovács-Öller

Kóbor

et al. 2021

Cells

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“…Even approaches like temporal brightness modulation [BMSG09, MBG09, BSM*13, LLAk*20], that try to smoothly blend into the scene, introduce temporal variation in return to remain perceivable. This might quickly act against their subtleness, as the human visual system is known to be highly sensitive to temporal variation in the peripheral visual field [ERH*18, HW19].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stereo Inverse Brightness Modulation for Guidance in Dynamic Panorama Videos in Virtual Reality

Grogorick

Tauscher

Heesen

et al. 2020

Computer Graphics Forum

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The peak of virtual reality offers new exciting possibilities for the creation of media content but also poses new challenges. Some areas of interest might be overlooked because the visual content fills up a large portion of viewers' visual field. Moreover, this content is available in 360° around the viewer, yielding locations completely out of sight, making, for example, recall or storytelling in cinematic Virtual Reality (VR) quite difficult. In this paper, we present an evaluation of Stereo Inverse Brightness Modulation for effective and subtle guidance of participants' attention while navigating dynamic virtual environments. The used technique exploits the binocular rivalry effect from human stereo vision and was previously shown to be effective in static environments. Moreover, we propose an extension of the method for successful guidance towards target locations outside the initial visual field. We conduct three perceptual studies, using 13 distinct panorama videos and two VR systems (a VR head mounted display and a fully immersive dome projection system), to investigate (1) general applicability to dynamic environments, (2) stimulus parameter and VR system influence, and (3) effectiveness of the proposed extension for out‐of‐sight targets. Our results prove the applicability of the method to dynamic environments while maintaining its unobtrusive appearance.

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“…We performed population analysis on MEA recordings of the retina of degus, a diurnal dichromat visual rodent that has been used as a good model for the study of the visual system (Chavez et al, 2003;Palacios-Munoz et al, 2014;Escobar et al, 2018), to demonstrate that the synchronous activity of retinal cells define neuronal ensembles that represent diverse natural stimuli and that the retina’s functional organization allows the decomposition of visual stimuli information into parallel channels formed by functionally overlapping neuronal ensembles. Furthermore, the retina appears to be more than a passive counting photons device.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parallel processing of natural images by overlapping retinal neuronal ensembles

Pérez-Ortega¹,

Araya²,

Ibaceta³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Even though the retinal microcircuit organization has been described in detail at the single-cell level, little is known about how groups of retinal cells' coordinated activity encode and process parallel information representing the spatial and temporal structure of changing environmental conditions. To describe the population dynamics of retinal neuronal ensembles, we used microelectrode array recordings that describe hundreds of retinal ganglion cells' simultaneous activity in response to a short movie captured in the natural environment where our subject develops their visual behaviors. The vectorization of population activity allowed the identification of retinal neuronal ensembles that synchronize to specific segments of natural stimuli. These synchronous retinal neuronal ensembles were reliably activated by the same stimuli at different trials, indicating a robust population response of retinal microcircuits. The generation of asynchronous events required integrating a physiologically meaningful time window larger than 80 ms, demonstrating that retinal neuronal ensembles' time integration filters non-structured visual information. Interestingly, individual neurons could be part of several ensembles indicating that parallel circuits could encode environmental conditions changes. We conclude that parallel neuronal ensembles could represent the functional unit of retinal computations and propose that the further study of retinal neuronal ensembles could reveal emergent properties of retinal circuits that individual cells' activity cannot explain.

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Characterization of Retinal Functionality at Different Eccentricities in a Diurnal Rodent

Cited by 8 publications

References 73 publications

Regional Variation of Gap Junctional Connections in the Mammalian Inner Retina

Regional Variation of Gap Junctional Connections in the Mammalian Inner Retina

Stereo Inverse Brightness Modulation for Guidance in Dynamic Panorama Videos in Virtual Reality

Parallel processing of natural images by overlapping retinal neuronal ensembles

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