Visual neurons adapt to increases in stimulus contrast by reducing their response sensitivity and decreasing their integration time, a collective process known as 'contrast gain control.' In retinal ganglion cells, gain control arises at two stages: an intrinsic mechanism related to spike generation, and a synaptic mechanism in retinal pathways. Here, we tested whether gain control is expressed...

The origin of the action potential in the cochlea has been a long-standing puzzle. Because voltage-dependent Na+ (Nav) channels are essential for action potential generation, we investigated the detailed distribution of Nav1.6 and Nav1.2 in the cochlear ganglion, cochlear nerve, and organ of Corti, including the type I and type II ganglion cells. In most type I ganglion cells, Nav1.6 was presen...

Transient lateral inhibition (TLI), the suppression of responses of a ganglion cell to light stimuli in the receptive field center by changes in illumination in the receptive field surround, was studied in light-adapted mud puppy and tiger salamander retinas using both eyecup and retinal slice preparations. In the eyecup, TLI was measured in on-off ganglion cells as the ability of rotating, con...

Chameleons display a number of well-described physiological peculiarities of their visual system, but there is no information on the topography of the retinal ganglion cell layer. In the present study, ganglion cell density of the chameleon retina was constructed from whole mounts of the retina stained with cresyl violet. For the identification of ganglion cells, these latter cells were labelle...

The histological distribution of R-cognin in chick retinas was determined from embryonic day 8 through 13 wk post-hatching by indirect immunofluorescence using polyclonal anticognin. On embryonic day 8, at a developmental stage without distinct retina layers, most of the cells within the tissue exhibited fluorescence. By embryonic day 12, when the strata of the retina are delineating and initia...

Ganglion cells convey information from the retina back to the brain. Recent experiments have examined how ganglion cell receptive fields are assembled from many incoming signals.

Reconstructed confocal image of a retinal output neuron (narrow thorny ganglion cell, green) together with the axon terminals of presynaptic retinal interneurons (diffuse bipolar cell type 6, magenta) that provide the dominant synaptic input to this ganglion cell. For more information, see the article by Percival et al. (pages 3821–3825).

BACKGROUND Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) protects retinal ganglion cells against ischemia in ocular degenerative diseases. We aimed to determine the effect of BDNF-AS on the ischemic injury of retinal ganglion cells. METHODS The levels of BDNF and BDNF-AS were measured in retinal ganglion cells subjected to oxygen and glucose deprivation. The lentiviral vectors were constructed to ...

Although the identity of all the variables that may influence speech recognition after cochlear implantation is unknown, the degree of preservation of spiral ganglion cells is generally considered to be of primary importance. A series of experiments in our laboratories, directed at quantification of surviving spiral ganglion cells in the profoundly deaf, evaluation of the predictive value of a ...