Human visual performance depends on parallel functional channels established in the early stages of visual processing. Each psychophysically defined channel may depend on contributions from several types of ganglion cell. In turn, the contribution from each type of ganglion cell depends on the structure of its array and its wiring to specific types of photoreceptor. Our broad goal is to determine the retinal microanatomy that underlies these psychophysical and physiological aims are: 1) Identify in the foveal region of the primate (macaque) retina, which closely resembles the human, all the types of on ganglion cell that are present. 2) Determine the array structure of each type. 3) Determine the detailed connections of each type with rods and chromatically identified cones. 4) Incorporate this information into computational models that simulate ganglion cell performance under different conditions of luminance and spectral composition. These findings will provide a basis for linking the anatomical circuitry to the physiology and psychophysics. Our strategy is to study intensively a small patch of retina just off the foveal center, where spatial acuity is high, yet rods are also present, and where ganglion cells are stacked in multiple ranks. We will prepare the tissue in two series of ultrathin sections, one radial and the other tangential, photograph them in the electron microscope, and create complete photographic montages of each. We shall use the radial series to identify types and their circuitry and the tangential series to study the structure of the various arrays.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Eye Institute (NEI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01EY008124-04
Application #
3265297
Study Section
Visual Sciences B Study Section (VISB)
Project Start
1989-04-01
Project End
1994-03-31
Budget Start
1992-04-01
Budget End
1993-03-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
1992
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Pennsylvania
Department
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
042250712
City
Philadelphia
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
19104
Perge, Janos A; Niven, Jeremy E; Mugnaini, Enrico et al. (2012) Why do axons differ in caliber? J Neurosci 32:626-38
Tkacik, Gasper; Garrigan, Patrick; Ratliff, Charles et al. (2011) Natural images from the birthplace of the human eye. PLoS One 6:e20409
Prentice, Jason S; Homann, Jan; Simmons, Kristina D et al. (2011) Fast, scalable, Bayesian spike identification for multi-electrode arrays. PLoS One 6:e19884
Herr, Steve; Ngo, Ivy Tran; Huang, Teresa M et al. (2011) Cone synapses in macaque fovea: II. Dendrites of OFF midget bipolar cells exhibit Inner Densities similar to their Outer synaptic Densities in basal contacts with cone terminals. Vis Neurosci 28:17-28
Schein, Stan; Ngo, Ivy Tran; Huang, Teresa M et al. (2011) Cone synapses in macaque fovea: I. Two types of non-S cones are distinguished by numbers of contacts with OFF midget bipolar cells. Vis Neurosci 28:3-16
Lassova, Luisa; Fina, Marie; Sulaiman, Pyroja et al. (2010) Immunocytochemical evidence that monkey rod bipolar cells use GABA. Eur J Neurosci 31:685-96
Ratliff, Charles P; Borghuis, Bart G; Kao, Yen-Hong et al. (2010) Retina is structured to process an excess of darkness in natural scenes. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107:17368-73
Garrigan, Patrick; Ratliff, Charles P; Klein, Jennifer M et al. (2010) Design of a trichromatic cone array. PLoS Comput Biol 6:e1000677
Tkacik, Gasper; Prentice, Jason S; Balasubramanian, Vijay et al. (2010) Optimal population coding by noisy spiking neurons. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107:14419-24
Tkacik, Gasper; Prentice, Jason S; Victor, Jonathan D et al. (2010) Local statistics in natural scenes predict the saliency of synthetic textures. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107:18149-54

Showing the most recent 10 out of 51 publications