Topic: retinal circuits

Understanding how sensory neurons extract relevant information from natural scenes is a major challenge in neuroscience. Probing sensory systems with simple stimuli give limited insights on natural scene processing, and probing selectivity during natural scene stimulation is difficult. Even in the retina, is not clear how Retinal ganglion cells (RGC) extract specific features from natural scenes and send this information to the brain. Many studies using simple, artificial stimuli have shown responses to local light increase (ON-responses), and/or decrease (OFF), but it is unclear if this selec

During the course of evolution, a species’ environment shapes its sensory abilities, as individuals with more optimized sensory abilities are more likely survive and procreate. Adaptations to the statistics of the natural environment can be observed along the early visual pathway and across species. Therefore, characterising the properties of natural environments and studying the representation of natural scenes along the visual pathway is crucial for advancing our understanding of the structure and function of the visual system. In the past 20 years, mice have become an important model in vis