Abstract
How visual information is encoded in spikes of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) is essential in visual neuroscience. In the present study, we investigated the coding properties of mouse RGCs with dual-peak patterns with respect to visual stimulus intervals. We first analyzed the response properties, and observed that the latencies and spike counts of the two response peaks in the dual-peak pattern exhibited systematic changes with the preceding light-OFF interval. We then applied linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to assess the relative contributions of response characteristics of both peaks in information coding regarding the preceding stimulus interval. It was found that for each peak, the discrimination results were far better than chance level based on either latency or spike count, and were further improved by using the combination of the two parameters. Furthermore, the best discrimination results were obtained when latencies and spike counts of both peaks were considered in combination. In addition, the correct rate for stimulation discrimination was higher when RGC population activity was considered as compare to single neuron's activity, and the correct rate was increased with the group size. These results suggest that rate coding, temporal coding, and population coding are all involved in encoding the different stimulus-interval patterns, and the two response peaks in the dual-peak pattern carry complementary information about stimulus interval.
Highlights
Visual information is transmitted to the brain by spike trains of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) (Masland, 2001)
Our results suggest that the properties of both peaks in the RGCs’ light-ON responses can be modulated by different preceding light-OFF intervals (Figure 4)
Stimulus discrimination results derived by linear discriminant analysis (LDA) method demonstrated that both response peaks contributed to stimulus-interval coding, and better discrimination performance was obtained when the response parameters of both peaks were taken into account (Figure 5)
Summary
Visual information is transmitted to the brain by spike trains of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) (Masland, 2001). Response latency and firing rate are basic characteristics of RGC response, and are suggested to efficiently transmit information about stimulus features, such as stimulus wavelength, luminance, contrast, motion speed, and direction, etc. The properties of ON responses were modulated by preceding light-OFF intervals (Xiao et al, 2014b), we focused on the stimulus-intervaldependent ON-response changes and information coding in RGCs with dual-peak patterns, using full-field flashes with different light-OFF intervals. RGC groups performed better in visual discrimination than single cells, and the correct rate was positively correlated with group size These results added to previous findings that both peaks in dual-peak pattern were involved in light intensity coding (Thiel et al, 2006), and suggest that they might carry stimulation information complementary to each other
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