Form and function of cat retinal ganglion cells

Wr, Levick

doi:10.1038/254659a0

Cited by 94 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The contours were often elliptical (average ratio of major to minor axis 1-23) with the major axis oriented within 200 of the horizontal. Anatomical investigations of cat retinal ganglion cell dendritic fields (Boycott & W. R. LEVICK AND L. N. THIBOS Wassle,1974) indicated an asymmetry of about the same amount (usual ratio 11-12) which is consistent with the commonly held view that dendritic fields correspond closely with the receptive field centres of ganglion cells (Brown & Major, 1966;Honrubia & Elliott, 1970;Boycott & Wiissle, 1974;Cleland-& Levick, 1974;Stone & Fukuda, 1974;Levick, 1975;Peichl & Wiissle, 1979). However, no systematic pattern has yet been reported for the orientations of elongated dendritic fields.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 69%

Analysis of orientation bias in cat retina

Levick

Thibos

1982

The Journal of Physiology

Self Cite

204

153

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SUMMARY1. Responses of cat retinal ganglion cells to a drifting sinusoidal grating stimulus were measured as a function of the grating orientation and spatial frequency.2. The response at fixed frequency and contrast varied with orientation in the manner of a cosine function. A new measure was introduced to quantify this orientation bias in the response domain on an absolute scale of 0-100 %. Under experimental conditions designed to maximize the effect, the mean bias for 250 cells was 16% and the range was 0-46%. In 70 % of cells there was significant bias.3. Orientation bias varied with spatial frequency and was maximal near the high-frequency limit. The majority of biassed cells preferred the same orientation at high and low frequencies but in some cells a reversal occurred: the orientation which gave maximum response at high frequencies gave minimum response at low frequencies. The greatest variation of cut-off frequency with orientation was I octave.4. Orientation bias was due to neural, not optical, factors. Nevertheless, the phenomenon could often be imitated by deliberately introduced optical astigmatism of up to 4 dioptres for brisk-sustained units and over 10 dioptres for brisk-transient units.

show abstract

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 69%

Analysis of orientation bias in cat retina

Levick

Thibos

1982

The Journal of Physiology

Self Cite

204

153

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This suggests that other mechanism(s) might contribute to generating the pause. One possibility for this incomplete pause elimination may be derived from transient responses of retinal ganglion cells to a visual stimulus (Cleland et al, 1971;Levick, 1975).…”

Section: Gaba a And Gaba B Receptors Cooperatively Generate The Pausementioning

confidence: 99%

“…ON responses induced by a static visual stimulus in retinal ganglion cells and V1 neurons include both transient and persistent discharges (Hubel and Wiesel, 1959;Cleland et al, 1971;Levick, 1975). On the other hand, the majority of sSC neurons exhibit transient ON responses (Schiller and Koerner, 1971;Dräger and Hubel, 1975;Marrocco and Li, 1977;Rhoades and Chalupa, 1977;Moors and Vendrik, 1979;Wang et al, 2010).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

GABAergic mechanisms for shaping transient visual responses in the mouse superior colliculus

Kaneda

Isa

2013

Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An object that suddenly appears in the visual field should be quickly detected and responded to because it could be beneficial or harmful. The superficial layer of the superior colliculus (sSC) is a brain structure capable of such functions, as sSC neurons exhibit sharp transient spike discharges with short latency in response to the appearance of a visual stimulus.However, how transient activity is generated in the sSC is poorly understood. Here, we show that inhibitory inputs actively shape transient activity in the sSC. Juxtacellular recordings from anesthetized mice demonstrate that almost all types of sSC neurons, which were identified by post hoc histochemistry, show transient spike discharges, i.e., ON activity, immediately after visual stimulus onset. ON activity was followed by a pause before the visual stimulus was turned off. To determine whether the pause reflected the absence of excitatory drive or inhibitory conductance, we injected depolarizing currents juxtasomally, which enabled us to observe inhibition as decreased discharges. The pause was observed even under this condition, suggesting that inhibitory input caused the pause. We further found that local application of a mixture of gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) A and GABA B receptor antagonists additively diminished the pause. These results indicate that GABAergic inputs produce transient ON responses by attenuating excitatory activity through the cooperative activation of GABA A and GABA B receptors, allowing sSC neurons to act as a saliency detector. Detecting an object that suddenly appears in the visual field is crucial for animals because their survival may depend on whether the object is beneficial or harmful. Transient, but not persistent, spike discharges in the sensory systems should encode the detection of the appearance. One of the candidate nuclei for this function is the superior colliculus (SC), a midbrain structure that is critical for visuomotor information processing (Sparks, 1986;Isa and Sparks, 2006). The superficial layer of the SC (sSC) receives visual inputs from the retina and the primary visual cortex (V1) in a retinotopically organized manner (Dräger and Hubel, 1976;May, 2006). sSC neurons exhibit transient spike discharges, called ON responses, immediately after the appearance of a visual stimulus (Schiller and Koerner, 1971; Cynader, 1972, 1975;Cynader and Berman, 1972;Goldberg and Wurtz, 1972;Dräger and Hubel, 1975;Rhoades and Chalupa, 1977;Marrocco and Li, 1977;Moors and Vendrik, 1979;Wang et al., 2010), implying that the sSC could detect the appearance of the object. Indeed, lesions or inactivation of the SC cause a detection deficit of visual stimuli (Butter et al., 1978;Overton and Dean, 1988;Fitzmaurice et al., 2003).The sSC consists of several cell types, including excitatory and inhibitory neurons (Mize, 1992;Endo et al., 2003Endo et al., , 2005May, 2006;Kaneda et al., 2008). Previous intracellular recording and labeling studies elucidated that some sSC neurons responded to moving or static visual stim...

show abstract

“…In the actual measurement we found in agreement with previous authors (Barlow et al 1957;Cleland et al 1973;Enroth-Cugell, Hertz & Lennie, 1977) an average slope of -1 indicating a rectangular sensitivity profile and Ricco sum-135 mation. The reason for this discrepancy might be found in the non-linear transfer of the receptors, which can be approximated by a hyperbolic function (Naka & Rushton, 1967 (Barlow & Levick, 1969 The anatomical basis of the receptive field centre The anatomical basis of the receptive field centre was thought to be the dendritic field of retinal ganglion cells (see Levick, 1975, as a summary). A direct correlation of the receptive field measurements presented in this paper with the dendritic field measurements of Boycott & WAssle (1974) has to account for two factors: the first is the conversion of the receptive field data, which are measured in visual angle, into retinal distance.…”

Section: Coverage Of the Retina With Ganglion Cell Receptive Field Cementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The receptive fields of the majority of ganglion cells in the cat retina are concentrically organized into centres with antagonistic surrounds (Kuffler, 1953, Rodieck & Stone, 1965 Levick, 1975). It has been suggested that the physiological dimensions of the centre should be defined by the dendritic field size of a ganglion cell and the surround should be of a more varied extent, organized by the amacrine cells and their synapses (Gallego, 1965;Brown & Major, 1966;Dowling & Boycott, 1966; Creutzfeldt, Sakmann, Scheich & Korn, 1970).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Size, scatter and coverage of ganglion cell receptive field centres in the cat retina.

Peichl¹,

Wässle²

1979

The Journal of Physiology

267

138

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

1. Receptive field centre sizes of brisk‐sustained (X) and brisk‐transient (Y) ganglion cells of the cat retina were assessed by three different methods: small spot mapping, area threshold method and spatial resolution. 2. Centre sizes of brisk‐sustained (X) cells increased from 20' in the central area to about 70' at an eccentricity of 4.5 mm, centre sizes of brisk‐transient (Y) cells from 50' in the central area to about 140' at 5 mm eccentricity. 3. The scatter of centre sizes at one retinal location was measured by recording as many ganglion cells as possible in one cat in a small field of retina. The centre sizes of the individual classes were homogeneous and exhibited only a small amount of scatter. 4. The coverage of the retina by the different ganglion cell classes was assessed from their density and their receptive field centre area. At every retinal location the receptive field centres of seven to twenty brisk‐sustained (X) cells and of three to six brisk‐transient (Y) cells were found to overlap. Sluggish concentric and non‐concentric cells taken together have a coverage factor of about 60.

show abstract

Form and function of cat retinal ganglion cells

Cited by 94 publications

References 28 publications

Analysis of orientation bias in cat retina

Analysis of orientation bias in cat retina

GABAergic mechanisms for shaping transient visual responses in the mouse superior colliculus

Size, scatter and coverage of ganglion cell receptive field centres in the cat retina.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About