Spatial summation in the receptive field periphery of two types of on-center neurons in cat retina

Abstract

Peripheral annuli with the same inside diameters but variable outside diameters were used to study the peripheral summing properties of Group I and Group II cells ( Winters, Hickey and Pollack, 1973). The results showed that Group I and Group II cells could be differentiated on the basis of their responses to changes in the size of peripheral annuli. Group I cells showed spatial summation of both the on-excitation and the off-excitation of on-off responses elicted by peripheral annuli. This finding was not found to be dependent upon the location of the target in the receptive field periphery. The effect of target size on the response of Group II cells was found to be dependent upon the location of the target in the receptive field periphery. If the inside portion of the annulus was near the receptive field center, in the on-off zone, then small increases in target size produced an increase in the strength of the onexcitation whereas large changes in target size lead to a decrease in the strength of the onexcitation. Off-excitation showed spatial summation across the entire receptive field periphery. It was possible to demonstrate linear spatial summation in the receptive field periphery of Group II cells but not Group I cells.