Physiological properties of low-density ganglion cells in the primate retina
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The retina provides the sole source of visual information to the brain, yet the signal from the retina is only partially understood. In primates, there are ~20 types of output cells of the retina, called retinal ganglion cells, with each type extracting specific information about the visual scene and projecting to distinct targets in the brain. The five numerically dominant retinal ganglion cell types have been extensively studied, but much less is known about the computations of the remaining ganglion cell types. To understand the visual function of the retina in health and in disease, it is necessary to understand how distinctive signals in the diverse retinal ganglion cell types emerge within retinal circuits, and how they collectively encode visual inputs. This thesis explores the physiological properties of the low-density ganglion cell types. In total, large-scale multi-electrode recordings revealed the responses of 12 retinal ganglion cell types, each with distinctive spatial, temporal, and chromatic properties. Focusing on the ON and OFF smooth monostratified cell types, strikingly irregular receptive field structure composed of spatially segregated hotspots were observed, quite different from the classical view of retinal receptive fields. Direct visual stimulation and computational inference demonstrate strong nonlinearities in the retinal circuit which contribute to receptive field hotspots. Surprisingly, visual stimulation of different hotspots produced subtly different extracellular spike waveforms in the same cell, consistent with a dendritic contribution to hotspot structure. These findings suggest a unique visual computation and spike generation mechanism in the signals carried by smooth monostratified cells to the brain.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Rhoades, Colleen Elizabeth |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Chichilnisky, E. J |
| Thesis advisor | Chichilnisky, E. J |
| Thesis advisor | Baccus, Stephen A |
| Thesis advisor | Nuyujukian, Paul Herag |
| Degree committee member | Baccus, Stephen A |
| Degree committee member | Nuyujukian, Paul Herag |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Bioengineering. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Colleen Rhoades. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Bioengineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Colleen Elizabeth Rhoades
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