Coding Properties of Mouse Retinal Ganglion Cells with Dual-Peak Patterns with Respect to Stimulus Intervals

Abstract

How visual information is encoded in spikes of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) is essential in visual neuroscience. In the present study, we investigated the coding properties of mouse RGCs with dual-peak patterns with respect to visual stimulus intervals. We first analyzed the response properties, and observed that the latencies and spike counts of the two response peaks in the dual-peak pattern exhibited systematic changes with the preceding light-OFF interval. We then applied linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to assess the relative contributions of response characteristics of both peaks in information coding regarding the preceding stimulus interval. It was found that for each peak, the discrimination results were far better than chance level based on either latency or spike count, and were further improved by using the combination of the two parameters. Furthermore, the best discrimination results were obtained when latencies and spike counts of both peaks were considered in combination. In addition, the correct rate for stimulation discrimination was higher when RGC population activity was considered as compare to single neuron's activity, and the correct rate was increased with the group size. These results suggest that rate coding, temporal coding, and population coding are all involved in encoding the different stimulus-interval patterns, and the two response peaks in the dual-peak pattern carry complementary information about stimulus interval.

State-dependent modulation of thalamocortical oscillations by gamma light flicker with different frequencies, intensities, and duty cycles

“…Thus, for the entire GC cell network, periodic global flicker stimulation can entrain the resonance response, and the input from GC cells can be modeled as a periodic firing model with a frequency consistent with the flicker stimulation. As the duration of each gamma flicker is very short [about 10 ms, which is close to a GC spike duration ( Yan et al, 2016 )] and the firing rate of GC cells is positively correlated with the intensity of light stimulation ( Einevoll and Heggelund, 2000 ), the firing pattern of GC cells is simplified to one, two, or three spikes during a flicker to represent different light stimulation intensities. We also assume that the duty cycle is proportional to the number of spikes during each flicker and divide a 40-Hz flicker cycle into six equal parts, considering each flicker can emit up to three spikes of GC cells.…”