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Axonal Transmission in the Retina Introduces a Small Dispersion of Relative Timing in the Ganglion Cell Population Response

BACKGROUND: Visual stimuli elicit action potentials in tens of different retinal ganglion cells. Each ganglion cell type responds with a different latency to a given stimulus, thus transforming the high-dimensional input into a temporal neural code. The timing of the first spikes between different r...

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Autores principales: Zeck, Günther, Lambacher, Armin, Fromherz, Peter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3107248/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21674067
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020810
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author Zeck, Günther
Lambacher, Armin
Fromherz, Peter
author_facet Zeck, Günther
Lambacher, Armin
Fromherz, Peter
author_sort Zeck, Günther
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Visual stimuli elicit action potentials in tens of different retinal ganglion cells. Each ganglion cell type responds with a different latency to a given stimulus, thus transforming the high-dimensional input into a temporal neural code. The timing of the first spikes between different retinal projection neurons cells may further change along axonal transmission. The purpose of this study is to investigate if intraretinal conduction velocity leads to a synchronization or dispersion of the population signal leaving the eye. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We ‘imaged’ the initiation and transmission of light-evoked action potentials along individual axons in the rabbit retina at micron-scale resolution using a high-density multi-transistor array. We measured unimodal conduction velocity distributions (1.3±0.3 m/sec, mean ± SD) for axonal populations at all retinal eccentricities with the exception of the central part that contains myelinated axons. The velocity variance within each piece of retina is caused by ganglion cell types that show narrower and slightly different average velocity tuning. Ganglion cells of the same type respond with similar latency to spatially homogenous stimuli and conduct with similar velocity. For ganglion cells of different type intraretinal conduction velocity and response latency to flashed stimuli are negatively correlated, indicating that differences in first spike timing increase (up to 10 msec). Similarly, the analysis of pair-wise correlated activity in response to white-noise stimuli reveals that conduction velocity and response latency are negatively correlated. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Intraretinal conduction does not change the relative spike timing between ganglion cells of the same type but increases spike timing differences among ganglion cells of different type. The fastest retinal ganglion cells therefore act as indicators of new stimuli for postsynaptic neurons. The intraretinal dispersion of the population activity will not be compensated by variability in extraretinal conduction times, estimated from data in the literature.
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spelling pubmed-31072482011-06-13 Axonal Transmission in the Retina Introduces a Small Dispersion of Relative Timing in the Ganglion Cell Population Response Zeck, Günther Lambacher, Armin Fromherz, Peter PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Visual stimuli elicit action potentials in tens of different retinal ganglion cells. Each ganglion cell type responds with a different latency to a given stimulus, thus transforming the high-dimensional input into a temporal neural code. The timing of the first spikes between different retinal projection neurons cells may further change along axonal transmission. The purpose of this study is to investigate if intraretinal conduction velocity leads to a synchronization or dispersion of the population signal leaving the eye. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We ‘imaged’ the initiation and transmission of light-evoked action potentials along individual axons in the rabbit retina at micron-scale resolution using a high-density multi-transistor array. We measured unimodal conduction velocity distributions (1.3±0.3 m/sec, mean ± SD) for axonal populations at all retinal eccentricities with the exception of the central part that contains myelinated axons. The velocity variance within each piece of retina is caused by ganglion cell types that show narrower and slightly different average velocity tuning. Ganglion cells of the same type respond with similar latency to spatially homogenous stimuli and conduct with similar velocity. For ganglion cells of different type intraretinal conduction velocity and response latency to flashed stimuli are negatively correlated, indicating that differences in first spike timing increase (up to 10 msec). Similarly, the analysis of pair-wise correlated activity in response to white-noise stimuli reveals that conduction velocity and response latency are negatively correlated. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Intraretinal conduction does not change the relative spike timing between ganglion cells of the same type but increases spike timing differences among ganglion cells of different type. The fastest retinal ganglion cells therefore act as indicators of new stimuli for postsynaptic neurons. The intraretinal dispersion of the population activity will not be compensated by variability in extraretinal conduction times, estimated from data in the literature. Public Library of Science 2011-06-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3107248/ /pubmed/21674067 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020810 Text en Zeck et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Zeck, Günther
Lambacher, Armin
Fromherz, Peter
Axonal Transmission in the Retina Introduces a Small Dispersion of Relative Timing in the Ganglion Cell Population Response
title Axonal Transmission in the Retina Introduces a Small Dispersion of Relative Timing in the Ganglion Cell Population Response
title_full Axonal Transmission in the Retina Introduces a Small Dispersion of Relative Timing in the Ganglion Cell Population Response
title_fullStr Axonal Transmission in the Retina Introduces a Small Dispersion of Relative Timing in the Ganglion Cell Population Response
title_full_unstemmed Axonal Transmission in the Retina Introduces a Small Dispersion of Relative Timing in the Ganglion Cell Population Response
title_short Axonal Transmission in the Retina Introduces a Small Dispersion of Relative Timing in the Ganglion Cell Population Response
title_sort axonal transmission in the retina introduces a small dispersion of relative timing in the ganglion cell population response
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3107248/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21674067
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020810
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