Firing rates and dynamic correlated activities of ganglion cells both contribute to retinal information processing

In the present study, the electrical activities of paired retinal ganglion cells, under full field light stimuli with a variety of chromatic configurations, were recorded from a small functioning piece of retina using multi-electrode array (MEA). Neurons that had increased firings at light-ON and -OFF transients and did not show color-opponent properties were investigated. Single neuronal analysis showed that firing rate of each individual neuron was dependent on the intensity of illumination. Multi-unit analyses revealed that adjacent neurons often fired in synchrony in response to light stimulation. However, in some cases, the strength of correlation between the paired neurons was higher when the retina was exposed to red or green light, and the correlation was attenuated when yellow or white light was given. This seems to suggest that the ensemble activity of non-color-opponent ganglion cells might partly participate in color-information processing, with the red- and green-pathway inputs influencing each other. Such arrangement reflects principle of parsimony: the firing rates of single neuron represent the luminance intensity, and the correlated activities may tell the brain about the color information.

[1]  Markus Meister,et al.  Multi-neuronal signals from the retina: acquisition and analysis , 1994, Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

[2]  R. Masland.  The fundamental plan of the retina , 2001, Nature Neuroscience.

[3]  D. Baylor,et al.  Synchronous bursts of action potentials in ganglion cells of the developing mammalian retina. , 1991, Science.

[4]  Yi Zhou,et al.  Spike sorting based on automatic template reconstruction with a partial solution to the overlapping problem , 2004, Journal of Neuroscience Methods.

[5]  D. Dacey.  Primate retina: cell types, circuits and color opponency , 1999, Progress in Retinal and Eye Research.

[6]  W. Singer,et al.  Temporal coding in the visual cortex: new vistas on integration in the nervous system , 1992, Trends in Neurosciences.

[7]  Iman H. Brivanlou,et al.  Mechanisms of Concerted Firing among Retinal Ganglion Cells , 1998, Neuron.

[8]  U. Egert,et al.  A novel organotypic long-term culture of the rat hippocampus on substrate-integrated multielectrode arrays. , 1998, Brain research. Brain research protocols.

[9]  D. Baylor,et al.  Concerted Signaling by Retinal Ganglion Cells , 1995, Science.

[10]  U. Egert,et al.  A thin film microelectrode array for monitoring extracellular neuronal activity in vitro. , 1994, Biosensors & bioelectronics.

[11]  David J. Calkins,et al.  Evidence that Circuits for Spatial and Color Vision Segregate at the First Retinal Synapse , 1999, Neuron.

[12]  M. Meister.  Multineuronal codes in retinal signaling. , 1996, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[13]  J. Sanes,et al.  Developmentally Regulated Spontaneous Activity in the Embryonic Chick Retina , 1998, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[14]  D. Mastronarde.  Correlated firing of retinal ganglion cells , 1989, Trends in Neurosciences.

[15]  W. Singer,et al.  Long-range synchronization of oscillatory light responses in the cat retina and lateral geniculate nucleus , 1996, Nature.

[16]  D. Dacey,et al.  This paper was presented at a colloquium entitled ‘ ‘ Vision : From Photon to Perception , ’ ’ organized by , 1998 .

[17]  R. Eckhorn,et al.  Synchronous High‐frequency Oscillations in Cat Area 18 , 1995, The European journal of neuroscience.

[18]  Synaptic inputs to identified color‐coded amacrine and ganglion cells in the turtle retina , 1997, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[19]  W. Singer,et al.  Stimulus‐Dependent Neuronal Oscillations in Cat Visual Cortex: Inter‐Columnar Interaction as Determined by Cross‐Correlation Analysis , 1990, The European journal of neuroscience.

[20]  Michael J. Berry,et al.  The Neural Code of the Retina , 1999, Neuron.

[21]  J. Szentágothai,et al.  Brain Research , 2009, Experimental Neurology.

[22]  S N Baker,et al.  Precise Burst Synchrony in the Superior Colliculus of the Awake Cat during Moving Stimulus Presentation , 2001, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[23]  Robert G. Smith,et al.  The AII Amacrine Network: Coupling can Increase Correlated Activity , 1996, Vision Research.

[24]  Arnaud Delorme,et al.  Spike-based strategies for rapid processing , 2001, Neural Networks.

[25]  R. Wong,et al.  Developmental Changes in the Neurotransmitter Regulation of Correlated Spontaneous Retinal Activity , 2000, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[26]  M S Lewicki,et al.  A review of methods for spike sorting: the detection and classification of neural action potentials. , 1998, Network.

[27]  Vance Faber,et al.  Clustering and the continuous k-means algorithm , 1994 .