Abstract

In early sensory systems, cell-type diversity generally increases from the periphery into the brain, resulting in a greater heterogeneity of responses to the same stimuli. Surround suppression is a canonical visual computation that begins within the retina and is found at varying levels across retinal ganglion cell types. Our results show that divergence in the level of surround suppression occurs subcellularly, at bipolar cell synapses. Using single-cell electrophysiology and serial block-face scanning electron microscopy, we show that two retinal ganglion cell types exhibit very different levels of surround suppression even though they receive input from the same set of bipolar cell types. This divergence of the bipolar cell signal occurs through synapse-specific regulation by amacrine cells at the scale of tens of microns. These findings indicate that each synapse of a single bipolar cell can carry a unique visual signal, expanding the number of possible functional channels at the earliest stages of visual processing.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Details

Title
A presynaptic source drives differing levels of surround suppression in two mouse retina ganglion cell types
Author
Swygart, David; Wan-Qing, Yu; Takeuchi, Shunsuke; Rachel Rol Wong; Schwartz, Gregory
University/institution
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
Section
New Results
Publication year
2022
Publication date
Nov 13, 2022
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
ISSN
2692-8205
Source type
Working Paper
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2735679130
Copyright
© 2022. This article is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ (“the License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.