BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Cell. Neurosci.

Sec. Cellular Neurophysiology

Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fncel.2025.1600167

This article is part of the Research TopicRetinal output and the retino-recipient centersView all 4 articles

Cell-type specific repertoire of responses to natural scenes in primate retinal ganglion cells

Provisionally accepted
Alexandra  KlingAlexandra Kling1*Nora  BrackbillNora Brackbill1Colleen  RhoadesColleen Rhoades1Alex  GogliettinoAlex Gogliettino1Alexander  SherAlexander Sher2Alan  LitkeAlan Litke2E.J.  ChichilniskyE.J. Chichilnisky1
  • 1Stanford University, Stanford, United States
  • 2University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

At least 20 distinct retinal ganglion cells (RGC) types have been identified morphologically in the primate retina, but our understanding of the distinctive visual messages they send to various targets in the brain remains limited, particularly for naturalistic stimuli. Here, we use large-scale multi-electrode recordings to examine how multiple functionally-distinct RGC types in the macaque retina respond to flashed natural images. Responses to white noise visual stimulation were used to functionally identify 936 RGCs of 12 types in three recordings. Each cell type was confirmed by the mosaic organization of receptive fields, and 7 cell types were cross-identified between recordings. Responses to thousands of natural images were used to examine the average kinetics of light response in each RGC type as well as the repertoire of distinct firing patterns that each type produced. The average response across images was highly stereotyped for cells of each type and distinct for cells of different types. Responses to natural images more clearly distinguished certain cell types than did the response to white noise stimulation. Moreover, the full repertoires of firing patterns produced by different cell types, assessed by their latency and duration, were largely distinct in most cases and in some cases non-overlapping. Together these data provide an overview of the diversity of RGC signals transmitted from the primate retina to the brain in natural viewing conditions.

Keywords: Retinal Ganglion Cells, Primate retina, natural image processing, retinal output diversity, multi-electrode array recordings

Received: 26 Mar 2025; Accepted: 04 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Kling, Brackbill, Rhoades, Gogliettino, Sher, Litke and Chichilnisky. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Alexandra Kling, Stanford University, Stanford, United States

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