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Comparison of human and monkey retinal photoreceptor sampling mosaics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2009

Chander N. Samy  and
Joy Hirsch
Chander N. Samy
Affiliation:
Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven
Joy Hirsch
Affiliation:
Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven
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Abstract

We test the hypothesis that the diameters of foveal and near-foveal rods and cones for one well-studied human photoreceptor mosaic and one well-studied monkey photoreceptor mosaic (Macaca fascicularis) a scaled relative to focal length. We conclude that this hypothesis is not supported. Rather than being scali proportionally, the sizes of the rods and cones, respectively, are nearly equivalent for both the human ar monkey resulting in an effectively finer retinal grain for the larger human eye. Furthermore, the human density exceeds the monkey rod density beyond about 1 deg of retinal eccentricity. These results suggest variation across primate species is reflected in retinal sampling strategies.

Keywords

Human and monkey retinal samplingPrimate photoreceptor mosaicSampling strategies
Type
Short communication
Information
Visual Neuroscience , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 281 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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