Biophysical Journal 58: 1227-1233 (1990)
© 1990 the Biophysical Society

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Bialek, W Articles by Owen, W G Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Bialek, W Articles by Owen, W G

Temporal filtering in retinal bipolar cells. Elements of an optimal computation?

Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley 94720.

ABSTRACT

Recent experiments indicate that the dark-adapted vertebrate visual system can count photons with a reliability limited by dark noise in the rod photoreceptors themselves. This suggests that subsequent layers of the retina, responsible for signal processing, add little if any excess noise and extract all the available information. Given the signal and noise characteristics of the photoreceptors, what is the structure of such an optimal processor? We show that optimal estimates of time-varying light intensity can be accomplished by a two-stage filter, and we suggest that the first stage should be identified with the filtering which occurs at the first anatomical stage in retinal signal processing, signal transfer from the rod photoreceptor to the bipolar cell. This leads to parameter-free predictions of the bipolar cell response, which are in excellent agreement with experiments comparing rod and bipolar cell dynamics in the same retina. As far as we know this is the first case in which the computationally significant dynamics of a neuron could be predicted rather than modeled.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				E. P. Hornstein, J. Verweij, P. H. Li, and J. L. Schnapf Gap-Junctional Coupling and Absolute Sensitivity of Photoreceptors in Macaque Retina J. Neurosci., November 30, 2005; 25(48): 11201 - 11209. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				P. T. Clark and M. C. W. van Rossum The Optimal Synapse for Sparse, Binary Signals in the Rod Pathway Neural Comput., January 1, 2005; 18(1): 26 - 44. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				N. K. Dhingra and R. G. Smith Spike Generator Limits Efficiency of Information Transfer in a Retinal Ganglion Cell J. Neurosci., March 24, 2004; 24(12): 2914 - 2922. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				C. E. Armstrong-Gold and F. Rieke Bandpass Filtering at the Rod to Second-Order Cell Synapse in Salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) Retina J. Neurosci., May 1, 2003; 23(9): 3796 - 3806. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				D. M. Schneeweis and J. L. Schnapf The Photovoltage of Macaque Cone Photoreceptors: Adaptation, Noise, and Kinetics J. Neurosci., February 15, 1999; 19(4): 1203 - 1216. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				C. Passaglia, F. Dodge, E. Herzog, S. Jackson, and R. Barlow Deciphering a neural code for vision PNAS, November 11, 1997; 94(23): 12649 - 12654. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]