Behavioral confirmation of the "silent period" during adaptation to bright lights.

نویسندگان

  • M K Powers
  • S S Easter
چکیده

The “silent period” is an interval of time following the onset of an intense background during which there is absolute refractoriness to incremental light stimuli. The phenomenon has been reported to occur at all levels of retinal processing in the skate (Dowling and Ripps, 1970, 1971, 1972; Green, Dowling, Siegel and Ripps, 1975), in the ERG of several other elasmobranchs (Hamasaki and Bridges, 1965), and in the retinal ganglion cells of the goldfish (Raynauld, 1969; Beauchamp and Daw, 1972). The possibility that the effect occurs only in isolated preparations of retinal tissue (which may be less responsive than the same tissue in an intact animal) can be eliminated on the basis of the results of Hamasaki and Bridges (1965) and Beauchamp and Daw (1972), who found it in intact paralyzed preparations. This note provides further confirmation of the existence of the silent period by showing that restrained but otherwise normal goldfish do not respond behaviorally to incremental light stimuli for several minutes following onset of an intense background. We carried out two experiments, using two different behavioral techniques. In one, goldfish were conditioned to respond to increases in the intensity of a large spot of light. In the other, they responded reflexly, using optokinetic nystagmus (OKN), to movements of a striped drum.

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عنوان ژورنال:
  • Vision research

دوره 18 8  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 1978