Temporal Characteristics of Neonatal Chick Retinal Ganglion Cell Responses: Effects of Luminance, Contrast, and Color

CS, Deepak; Krishnan, Abhijith; Narayan, K. S.

doi:10.1101/2022.07.28.499133

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 42 publications

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“…Yet, a systematic overview of retinal functions is lacking for most non-mammalian lineages, and especially for birds 17,18 . This is in part due to the difficulty of recording from the ex-vivo bird retina [19][20][21] , where minor mechanical insult causes pathological waves of depression 22 . Consequently, to date insights into the operation of avian retinas are largely 19,23 restricted to non-invasive techniques such as electroretinograms 24,25 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Birds multiplex spectral and temporal visual information via retinal On- and Off-channels

Seifert

Roberts

Kafetzis

et al. 2022

Preprint

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SUMMARYEarly retinal circuits divide incoming visual information into functionally opposite elementary signals: On and Off, transient and sustained, chromatic and achromatic. Together these signals can yield an efficient representation of the scene for transmission to the brain via the optic nerve. For example, primate On- and Off-parasol circuits are transient, while On- and Off-midget circuits are sustained. But this long-standing interpretation of retinal function is based on mammals, and it is unclear whether this functional arrangement is common to all vertebrates. Here we show that poultry chicks use a fundamentally different strategy to communicate information from the eye to the brain. Rather than using functionally opposite pairs of retinal output channels, chicks encode the polarity, timing, and spectral composition of visual stimuli in a highly correlated manner: fast achromatic information is encoded by Off-circuits, and slow chromatic information overwhelmingly by On-circuits. Moreover, most retinal output channels combine On- and Off-circuits to simultaneously encode, or multiplex, both achromatic and chromatic information.Our results from birds conform to evidence from fish, amphibians, and reptiles which retain the full ancestral complement of four spectral types of cone photoreceptors. By contrast, mammals lost two of these cones early in their evolution, and we posit that this loss drove a radical simplification and reorganisation of retinal circuits, while birds and many other extant non-mammalian lineages retain the ancestral strategy for retinal image processing.HIGHLIGHTSFirst large-scale survey of visual functions in an avian retinaOff-circuits are fast and achromatic, On-circuits are slow and chromaticMost avian RGCs are OnOff and encode both types of informationColour and greyscale information can be decoded based on the kinetics

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Birds multiplex spectral and temporal visual information via retinal On- and Off-channels

Seifert

Roberts

Kafetzis

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Birds multiplex spectral and temporal visual information via retinal On- and Off-channels

Seifert,

Roberts,

Kafetzis

et al. 2023

Nat Commun

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In vertebrate vision, early retinal circuits divide incoming visual information into functionally opposite elementary signals: On and Off, transient and sustained, chromatic and achromatic. Together these signals can yield an efficient representation of the scene for transmission to the brain via the optic nerve. However, this long-standing interpretation of retinal function is based on mammals, and it is unclear whether this functional arrangement is common to all vertebrates. Here we show that male poultry chicks use a fundamentally different strategy to communicate information from the eye to the brain. Rather than using functionally opposite pairs of retinal output channels, chicks encode the polarity, timing, and spectral composition of visual stimuli in a highly correlated manner: fast achromatic information is encoded by Off-circuits, and slow chromatic information overwhelmingly by On-circuits. Moreover, most retinal output channels combine On- and Off-circuits to simultaneously encode, or multiplex, both achromatic and chromatic information. Our results from birds conform to evidence from fish, amphibians, and reptiles which retain the full ancestral complement of four spectral types of cone photoreceptors.

show abstract

Temporal Characteristics of Neonatal Chick Retinal Ganglion Cell Responses: Effects of Luminance, Contrast, and Color

Cited by 2 publications

References 42 publications

Birds multiplex spectral and temporal visual information via retinal On- and Off-channels

Birds multiplex spectral and temporal visual information via retinal On- and Off-channels

Birds multiplex spectral and temporal visual information via retinal On- and Off-channels

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