The spiral ganglion is an essential functional component of the peripheral auditory system. Most types of hearing loss are associated with spiral ganglion cell degeneration which is irreversible due to the inner ear's lack of regenerative capacity. Recent studies revealed the existence of stem cells in the postnatal spiral ganglion, which gives rise to the hope that these cells might be useful ...

Retinal ganglion cells are the output neurons that encode and transmit information from the eye to the brain. Their diverse physiologic and anatomic properties have been intensively studied and appear to account well for a number of psychophysical phenomena such as lateral inhibition and chromatic opponency. In this paper, we summarize our current view of retinal ganglion cell properties and po...

The development of superior cervical ganglion cells has been studied in the fetal rat. Sympathetic cells appear first in thoracic sites and, one day later, in cervical sites; localized proliferation among these cells gives rise to the superior cervical and stellate ganglia. The maturation of superior cervical ganglion cells was examined by staining these neurons with horseradish peroxidase in f...

In Brn3b(-/-) mice, where 80% of retinal ganglion cells degenerate early in development, the remaining 20% include most or all ganglion cell types. Cells of the same type cover the retinal surface evenly but tile it incompletely, indicating that a regular mosaic and normal dendritic field size can be maintained in the absence of contact among homotypic cells. In Math5(-/-) mice, where only appr...

It has been hypothesized that synaptic pruning precedes retinal ganglion cell degeneration in glaucoma, causing early dysfunction to retinal ganglion cells. To begin to assess this, we studied the excitatory synaptic inputs to individual ganglion cells in normal mouse retinas and in retinas with ganglion cell degeneration from glaucoma (DBA/2J), or following an optic nerve crush. Excitatory syn...

A mathematical model for receptive field of retinal ganglion cell is proposed. This model includes the effect of the non-classical receptive field, which is resulted from the cross-inhabitation between the amacrine cells. This model also concerns the nonlinear effect of the photoreceptors so that unifies the X and Y ganglion cells. The null-test response of the X cell, the on-off response of th...

The topographical distributions of photoreceptors and ganglion cells of the California ground squirrel (Spermophilus beecheyi) were quantified in a light microscopic study. The central retina contains broad, horizontal streaks of high photoreceptor density (40-44,000/mm2) and high ganglion cell density (20-24,000/mm2). The isodensity contours of both cell types are elliptical and oriented along...

The inhibitory surround signal in retinal ganglion cells is usually attributed to lateral horizontal cell signaling in the outer plexiform layer (OPL). However, recent evidence suggests that lateral inhibition at the inner plexiform layer (IPL) also contributes to the ganglion cell receptive field surround. Although amacrine cell input to ganglion cells mediates a component of this lateral inhi...

There exist more than 30 different morphological amacrine cell types, but there may be fewer physiological types. Here we studied the amacrine cell outputs by measuring the temporal and spatial properties of feedforward inhibition to four different types of ganglion cells. These ganglion cells, each with concentric receptive field organization, appear to receive a different relative contributio...

Glaucoma, the worldwide leading cause of irreversible blindness, is characterized by progressive degeneration of the optic nerve and loss of retinal ganglion cells. Research into glaucoma pathogenesis has been hampered by difficulties in isolating and culturing retinal ganglion cells in vitro. However, recent improvements in laboratory techniques have enabled the generation of a variety of matu...