Spatial receptive field properties of rat retinal ganglion cells

Abstract

The rat is a popular animal model for vision research, yet there is little quantitative information about the physiological properties of the cells that provide its brain with visual input, the retinal ganglion cells. It is not clear whether rats even possess the full complement of ganglion cell types found in other mammals. Since such information is important for evaluating rodent models of visual disease and elucidating the function of homologous and heterologous cells in different animals, we recorded from rat ganglion cells in vivo and systematically measured their spatial receptive field (RF) properties using spot, annulus, and grating patterns. Most of the recorded cells bore likeness to cat X and Y cells, exhibiting brisk responses, center-surround RFs, and linear or nonlinear spatial summation. The others resembled various types of mammalian W cell, including local-edge-detector cells, suppressed-by-contrast cells, and an unusual type with an ON–OFF surround. They generally exhibited sluggish responses, larger RFs, and lower responsiveness. The peak responsivity of brisk-nonlinear (Y-type) cells was around twice that of brisk-linear (X-type) cells and several fold that of sluggish cells. The RF size of brisk-linear and brisk-nonlinear cells was indistinguishable, with average center and surround diameters of 5.6 ± 1.3 and 26.4 ± 11.3 deg, respectively. In contrast, the center diameter of recorded sluggish cells averaged 12.8 ± 7.9 deg. The homogeneous RF size of rat brisk cells is unlike that of cat X and Y cells, and its implication regarding the putative roles of these two ganglion cell types in visual signaling is discussed.

Temporal properties of dual-peak responses of mouse retinal ganglion cells and effects of inhibitory pathways

“…In rat retina, the brisk cells had a mean latency (defined as the time lag between the stimulus onset and the peak response, as adopted in the present study) around 70 ms, while sluggish cells had a mean latency around 180 ms (Heine and Passaglia 2011). Such response parameter distributions were similar to those observed in our present study.…”

“…In other mammalian retinas, ganglion cells with short and long latencies have also been reported and classified as brisk and sluggish cells (van Wyk et al 2006;Heine and Passaglia 2011). In rat retina, the brisk cells had a mean latency (defined as the time lag between the stimulus onset and the peak response, as adopted in the present study) around 70 ms, while sluggish cells had a mean latency around 180 ms (Heine and Passaglia 2011).…”

Functional Asymmetries between Central and Peripheral Retinal Ganglion Cells in a Diurnal Rodent

“…The functional characterization of RGCs, obtained from the analysis of cell response parameters such as latency (short / long), ON / OFF, sustained / transient, biphasity or receptive field properties has revealed a huge diversity (Carcieri et al, 2003; Heine and Passaglia, 2011; Baden et al, 2016) indicating a large number of functional channels originated at the RGC level. This functional variety of RGCs could be explained observing the circuitries and anatomical cell types identified by morphological, immunomarker and molecular criteria (Euler et al, 2014; Masland, 2012b).…”

Influence of background size, luminance and eccentricity on different adaptation mechanisms

“…Spatial summation has also been traditionally studied using psychophysical approaches (Barlow, 1958; Redmond et al, 2013) and its changes are explained by an increasing receptive field size with eccentricity. Modern physiology has also contributed to this type of study; e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging methods estimated that the receptive field size increases with eccentricity in humans whereas other physiological studies provided a quantitative description of the spatial receptive fields in primates and rats (Croner & Kaplan, 1994; Dumoulin & Wandell, 2008; Heine & Passaglia, 2011). …”