Direction selectivity in the retina.

David I Vaney, W Rowland Taylor
Author Information
  1. David I Vaney: Vision, Touch and Hearing Research Centre, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, Queensland, Australia. d.vaney@uq.edu.au

Abstract

The neuronal circuitry underlying the generation of direction selectivity in the retina has remained elusive for almost 40 years. Recent studies indicate that direction selectivity may be established within the radial dendrites of 'starburst' amacrine cells and that retinal ganglion cells may acquire their direction selectivity by the appropriate weighting of excitatory and inhibitory inputs from starburst dendrites pointing in different directions. If so, this would require unexpected complexity and subtlety in the synaptic connectivity of these CNS neurons.

MeSH Term

Amacrine Cells
Animals
Motion Perception
Neural Inhibition
Retina
Retinal Ganglion Cells
Synaptic Transmission

Word Cloud

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