ONOFF retinal ganglion cells temporally encode OFF/ON sequence
While the functions of ON and OFF retinal ganglion cells have been intensively investigated, that of ONOFF cells has not. In the present study, the temporal properties of spike trains emitted from ON-OFF cells in response to randomly flickering or multiphase ramp stimuli were examined in the Japanese quail. The results indicate that the firing of ON-spikes was influenced by the recent firing of OFF-spikes, and vice versa. As a result of this interaction, OFF/ON sequence of light intensity change was encoded with a spike pair with an interval of 20ms, indicating that temporal coding is utilized in the vertebrate visual system as early as the retina. Thus, the present results suggest that retinal neuronal circuits may detect specific sequential features of stimuli.
onoff retinal ganglion cells spike train quail temporal coding retina stimulus sequence optic nerve