Properties of rarely encountered types of ganglion cells in the cat's retina and on overall classification

Abstract

SUMMARY1. In a reference sample of 960 cat retinal ganglion cells, seventy-three had receptive fields departing from the concentric centre-surround pattern.2. Five classes were distinguished among the subset: local edge detectors, direction-selective cells, colour-coded cells, uniformity detectors, edge inhibitory off-centre cells.3. Local edge detectors (forty-five) possessed a radially symmetrical pattern of responses to both centrifugal and centripetal movements of both black and white small targets, an on-off receptive field with a silent inhibitory surround and a low or zero maintained discharge. Their operation could be interpreted as the detection of a contrasting border confined to a small region of the visual field.4. With direction-selective units (eleven) it was possible to find an axis through the receptive field along which sharply different responses could be obtained for opposite directions of movement of small black or white targets.5. Colour units (six) were mostly of the single opponent type having excitatory input from blue-sensitive cones and inhibitory input from long wave-length cones. Both inputs coexisted at the centre of the field and either could be spatially more extensive than the other. One example changed over to rod input under scotopic conditions, another did not.6. Uniformity detectors (five) had a brisk maintained discharge which was reduced or abolished temporarily by all forms of visual stimulation.7. Edge inhibitory off-centre units (three) behaved like uniformity detectors for small targets and fine gratings but like off-centre on-surround units for large targets. Their receptive fields consisted of three concentric regions: a small sized, central edge inhibitory region; a larger zone of off-responsiveness; and an outlying annulus of on-responsiveness.

Computations in the vertebrate retina: gain enhancement, differentiation and motion discrimination

“…Moving a visual stimulus, say a dark bar on a light background, in a particular, the preferred, direction elicits a vigorous response from the cell while movement in the opposite direction, termed null direction, yields no significant response (figure 3d). Directional selective cells, described in the frog's retina in a classical paper by Maturana, Lettvin, McCulloch and Pitts ( 1960), have subsequently been identified, among others, in the third optic ganglion of the house fly, the retina of the rabbit, squirrel and cat, the optic tectum of frogs and pigeons and the visual cortex of both cats and monkeys (Hassenstein and Reichardt, 1956;Maturana and Frenk, 1963;Barlow and Levick, 1965;Rubel and Wiesel, 1962;Cleland and Levick, 1974;Hausen, 1981).…”

Receptive Field Properties of Color Opponent Neurons in the Cat Lateral Geniculate Nucleus

“…The fact that blue-ON cells responded preferentially to the same stimulus that minimized the responses of achromatic cells, demonstrates that S-cone stimuli were effective in driving a second receptor mechanism. It has been known since early studies of the cat visual system (Daw and Pearlman, 1970;Cleland and Levick, 1974;Wilson et al, 1976;Krüger, 1979;Rowe and Cox, 1993) that certain "colorcoded" retinal ganglion cells or thalamic relay cells respond vigorously to narrow-band blue light but are inhibited by longer wavelengths. Together, 13 examples of color-coded neurons are known from earlier studies of the cat LGN (Daw and Pearlman, 1970;Pearlman and Daw, 1970;Cleland et al, 1976;Wilson et al, 1976).…”

“…Similarly, the few examples of color-coded neurons known from studies done in cats (Daw and Pearlman, 1970;Cleland and Levick, 1974;Wilson et al, 1976) showed mostly ON responses to blue light. Simple ON-OFF flashes (square-wave modulation) of S-cone contrast evoked typically tonic ON responses in our sample of 14 blue-ON cells (Fig.…”

“…Color-coded neurons in cats are customarily attributed to the "third visual channel" represented by W-cells, comprising smallbodied neurons with slow conducting axons (Daw and Pearlman, 1970;Cleland and Levick, 1974;Cleland et al, 1976;Wilson et al, 1976). Although we did not classify our cells in the X, Y, and W categories, the laminar location of blue-ON cells in our sample (Fig.…”

“…In the retinae of rodents Li and DeVries, 2006;Puller et al, 2011) and cats (Cohen and Sterling, 1990a,b), S-cones connect a specific bipolar cell type. Antagonistic responses to the activation of S-and ML-cones were demonstrated in several species including cats by recordings from retinal ganglion cells (Michael, 1966;Cleland and Levick, 1974;Vaney et al, 1981;Hemmi et al, 2002;Ekesten and Gouras, 2005;Yin et al, 2009) or from relay neurons of the LGN (Daw and Pearlman, 1970;Michail, 1973;Cleland et al, 1976;Wilson et al, 1976). Their spatial receptive field structure has not been studied systematically, and it is not known whether they constitute one or more coherent functional channels.…”