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Dendritic Computation of Direction Selectivity by Retinal Ganglion Cells
W. Rowland Taylor,12*Shigang He,4William R. Levick,23David I. Vaney4
Direction-selective ganglion cells (DSGCs) in the retina respond
strongly when stimulated by image motion in a preferred directionbut
are only weakly excited by image motion in the opposite nulldirection.
Such coding represents an early manifestation of complexinformation
processing in the visual system, but the cellularlocus and the
synaptic mechanisms have yet to be elucidated. Werecorded the synaptic
activity of DSGCs using strategies to observethe asymmetric inhibitory
inputs that underlie the generationof direction selectivity. The
critical nonlinear interactionsbetween the excitatory and inhibitory
inputs took place postsynapticallywithin the dendrites of the DSGCs.
1 John Curtin School of Medical Research,
2 Centre for Visual Sciences,
3 Department of Psychology, Australian National
University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
4 Vision,
Touch and Hearing Research Centre, School of Biomedical Sciences,
University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
Rowland.Taylor{at}anu.edu.au
