Spatially displaced excitation contributes to the encoding of interrupted motion by a retinal direction-selective circuit
Abstract
Spatially distributed excitation and inhibition collectively shape a visual neuron's receptive field (RF) properties. In the direction-selective circuit of the mammalian retina, the role of strong null-direction inhibition of On-Off direction-selective ganglion cells (On-Off DSGCs) on their direction selectivity is well-studied. However, how excitatory inputs influence the On-Off DSGC's visual response is underexplored. Here, we report that On-Off DSGCs have a spatially displaced glutamatergic receptive field along their horizontal preferred-null motion axes. This displaced receptive field contributes to DSGC null-direction spiking during interrupted motion trajectories. Theoretical analyses indicate that population responses during interrupted motion may help populations of On-Off DSGCs signal the spatial location of moving objects in complex, naturalistic visual environments. Our study highlights that the direction-selective circuit exploits separate sets of mechanisms under different stimulus conditions, and these mechanisms may help encode multiple visual features.
Data availability
Data available on Dryad Digital Repository (doi:10.5061/dryad.vq83bk3s8). Source data files have been provided for all main text and supplemental figures.
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Spatially displaced excitation contributes to the encoding of interrupted motion by the retinal direction-selective circuitDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.vq83bk3s8.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
NIH (R01 NS109990)
- Wei Wei
McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience (McKnight Scholarship Award)
- Wei Wei
NSF (GRFP DGE-1746045)
- Jennifer Ding
NIH (F31 EY029156)
- Hector Acaron Ledesma
NSF (Career Award 1652617)
- Stephanie E Palmer
Physics of Biological Function (PHY-1734030)
- Stephanie E Palmer
NIH (RO1 EY012793)
- David M Berson
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All procedures regarding the use of mice were in accordance with the University of Chicago Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) (ACUP protocol 72247) and with the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and the Public Health Service Policy.
Copyright
© 2021, Ding et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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