Functional connectivity in the retina at the resolution of
photoreceptors
Greg D. Field,
Jeffrey L. Gauthier,
Alexander Sher,
Martin Greschner,
Timothy A. Machado,
Lauren H. Jepson,
Jonathon Shlens,
Deborah E. Gunning,
Keith Mathieson,
Wladyslaw Dabrowski,
Liam Paninski,
Alan M. Litke
& E. J. Chichilnisky
Nature
467, 673-677
To understand a neural circuit requires knowledge of its
connectivity. Here we report measurements of functional connectivity
between the input and ouput layers of the macaque retina at
single-cell resolution and the implications of these for colour
vision. Multi-electrode technology was used to record simultaneously
from complete populations of the retinal ganglion cell types (midget,
parasol and small bistratified) that transmit high-resolution visual
signals to the brain. Fine-grained visual stimulation was used to
identify the location, type and strength of the functional input of
each cone photoreceptor to each ganglion cell. The populations of ON
and OFF midget and parasol cells each sampled the complete population
of long- and middle-wavelength-sensitive cones. However, only OFF
midget cells frequently received strong input from
short-wavelength-sensitive cones. ON and OFF midget cells showed a
small non-random tendency to selectively sample from either long- or
middle-wavelength-sensitive cones to a degree not explained by
clumping in the cone mosaic. These measurements reveal computations in
a neural circuit at the elementary resolution of individual neurons.
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