Photoreceptive retinal ganglion cells control the information rate of the optic nerve.

ABSTRACT: Information transfer in the brain relies upon energetically expensive spiking activity of neurons. Rates of information flow should therefore be carefully optimized, but mechanisms to control this parameter are poorly understood. We address this deficit in the visual system, where ambient light (irradiance) is predictive of the amount of information reaching the eye and ask whether a neural measure of irradiance can therefore be used to proactively control information flow along the optic nerve. We first show that firing rates for the retina's output neurons [retinal ganglion cells (RGCs)] scale with irradiance and are positively correlated with rates of information and the gain of visual responses. Irradiance modulates firing in the absence of any other visual signal confirming that this

SUBMITTER: Milosavljevic N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6294960 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature