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Science 29 September 2000:
Vol. 289. no. 5488, pp. 2347 - 2350
DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5488.2347
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Reports

Dendritic Computation of Direction Selectivity by Retinal Ganglion Cells

W. Rowland Taylor,12* Shigang He,4 William R. Levick,23 David I. Vaney4

Direction-selective ganglion cells (DSGCs) in the retina respond strongly when stimulated by image motion in a preferred direction but are only weakly excited by image motion in the opposite null direction. Such coding represents an early manifestation of complex information processing in the visual system, but the cellular locus and the synaptic mechanisms have yet to be elucidated. We recorded the synaptic activity of DSGCs using strategies to observe the asymmetric inhibitory inputs that underlie the generation of direction selectivity. The critical nonlinear interactions between the excitatory and inhibitory inputs took place postsynaptically within 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

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