Science Daily May 23, 2022
Mice use a specific neural pathway to detect shadows, and it can detect just about the dimmest shadows possible. The human eye has the same neural circuit, which researchers in Finland think could be used to probe visual diseases at unprecedented resolution. To test shadow detection, the researchers put mice in a maze with nearly no light. The exit was marked by a black spot, just barely distinct from the surrounding darkness. By tracking how the mice moved through the maze and measuring the activity of neurons at the back of the eye the team showed that a group of retinal cells known as OFF ganglion cells detected the extremely small dip in light levels. Based on the fundamental limit of shadow detection based on the physical properties of the light receptors and neural pathways, they found that the behaviour and the retinal activity of the mice came very close to a perfect response. The findings show how the process of making sense of incoming light is distributed across different cell types that carry out different computational tasks in the retina. As the retinal circuit responsible for conveying information to ON and OFF ganglion cells is nearly identical in humans, according to the researchers, their findings may have clinical implications…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Graphical abstract. Credit: Current Biology, May 23, 2022