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Robust directional computation in on-off directionally selective ganglion cells of rabbit retina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2007

NORBERTO M. GRZYWACZ  and
FRANKLIN R. AMTHOR
NORBERTO M. GRZYWACZ
Affiliation:
Department of Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
FRANKLIN R. AMTHOR
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham Alabama
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Abstract

The spatial and temporal interactions in the receptive fields of On-Off directionally selective (DS) ganglion cells endow them with directional selectivity. Using a variety of stimuli, such as sinusoidal gratings, we show that these interactions make directional selectivity of the DS ganglion cell robust with respect to stimulus parameters such as contrast, speed, spatial frequency, and extent of motion. Moreover, unlike the directional selectivity of striate-cortex cells, On-Off DS ganglion cells display directional selectivity to motions not oriented perpendicularly to the contour of the objects. We argue that these cells may achieve such high robustness by combining multiple mechanisms of directional selectivity.

Keywords

Directional SelectivitySpeed TuningPlaidGanglion CellsRetina
Type
Research Article
Information
Visual Neuroscience , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , July 2007 , pp. 647 - 661
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

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